PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF DON MAXIMO PAZ COLLECTION

Provenance:
When Felix Resureccion Hidalgo died in 1913 leaving
a fortune of real estate, shares of stocks, and paintings —
and without leaving legitimate descendants nor recognized
natural heirs — his mother Don?a Maria Barbara Padilla y Flores, inherited everything. The next year, she too died leaving the Hidalgo-Padilla fortune to her heirs. The bulk of the paintings then went to the ‘sobrinos’ or nephews of Felix, namely Don Felipe Hidalgo, son of Jose; Don Eduardo Hidalgo Paz and Don?a Rosario Paz de Perez, children of his sister Pilar who was married to Maximo Paz.

ABOUT THE WORK

Resurrección Hidalgo often featured scenes in Normandy in his works. Alfredo Roces wrote in 1997: “As an academically trained painter, Hidalgo applied his knowledge of perspective to depict houses with accuracy, striving to create that illusory third dimension. Houses against the landscape fascinated him: be they the squat stone houses along the coasts of Normandy with tile or thatched roofs…” These spatial features and the hatched brushstrokes, which bathe the distant buildings in the Normandy light, are reminiscent of the aesthetic movements raging at the time. In the painting, the atmospheric effects are neutralized to concentrate on the structural elements of the composition. His personality stamped a certain elusive sensitivity; a wispy fragile quality in all his paintings. Hidalgo’s work continues the plain tradition, but by 1901 happily embraces more Modernist tendencies. Hidalgo’s eye cum brush displays all the unselfconscious charm of great folk art, while providing a unique window into the rich and colorful life of a Filipino artist who was for a time, a reluctant member of the Propaganda movement in Europe.