89

“La Inocencia,” a beautiful young lady painted by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo y Padilla in Paris in 1901, harks back to the happiest years of the affluent and elegant Filipino painter who had fallen in love with his Spanish model Maria Yrritia. He brought her all the way to Manila to meet his aristocratic mother and family. Predictably, Maria Yrritia’s modest origins met with stern disapproval from the superrich Barbara Padilla de Resurreccion Hidalgo — “the Queen of the Pasig River” as she owned the biggest fleet of “cascos” trading barges and a succession of warehouses that lined the river in Binondo and Tondo; it was a shipping and real estate fortune inherited from her father Narciso Padilla. Embittered, the couple returned to Spain and Felix never returned to his family and homeland. When he died, Maria Yrritia accompanied his remains and belongings back to Manila. She boarded a ship bound for Spain but never made it back as the ship sunk off South Africa. “La Inocencia” was acquired by Felix Hidalgo’s friend, contemporary, and neighbor Benito Cosme Legarda y Tuason and his wife Teresa de la Paz viuda de Severo Tuason. It was for many years the cynosure of the large “sala” of “La Casa Grande,” their storied residence at # 964 R Hidalgo street (formerly Calle San Sebastian) in Manila; hung on the other walls were more paintings by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo y Padilla, Juan Luna y Novicio, and the other notable painters of the day. The imposing “bahay-na-bato” was constructed by the Conde de Aviles on Calle San Sebastian in the 1850s. In those days, the Palacio de Malacanan was in a constant state of disrepair, so it was at the palatial and elegant “La Casa Grande” that the Spanish Governor-Generals entertained visiting royalty and aristocracy like the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869 and King Norodom I of Cambodia in 1872. “La Casa Grande” was purchased by the newlywed couple Benito Cosme Legarda y Tuason and Teresa de la Paz viuda de Tuason in 1876. Benito Legarda was a lawyer, the son of the Basque Benito Legarda y Lerma and the Filipina-Chinese heiress Cirila Magdalena Tuason of the famed landowning family. Benito Legarda later became a member of the cabinet of General Emilio Aguinaldo, the Vice-President of the Malolos Congress, and the Director of the Treasury; he became a member of the Philippine Commission in 1901 and co-founded the “Partido Federalista” with Trinidad H Pardo de Tavera. Teresa de la Paz was the young widow of Jose Severo Tuason, the fourth Lord of the Tuason “mayorazgo,” the only Filipino-Chinese family raised to the “hidalguia” nobility in Spain. Their patriarch Antonio Maria Tuason was of great assistance to the Spanish military forces during the British Occupation from 1762-64 and was subsequently ennobled by Spain. It was at “La Casa Grande” that they raised their three children Consuelo, Benito III, and Rita. Benito III “Bitong” married Filomena “Menang” Roces y Gonzalez; Consuelo “Titang” married Mauro Prieto y Gorricho; and Rita “Chata” married 1) L James Donaldson-Sim 2) Dr Benito Valdes y Salvador, thus completing the interrelations of four of Old Manila’s most prominent families, the Tuason-Legarda-Prieto-Valdes clan. Benito III “Bitong” Legarda y de la Paz married Filomena “Menang” Roces y Gonzalez and had seven children: Benito IV “Ben” married Trinidad "Trining"Fernandez; Rosario “Bombona” married Dr Basilio Valdes; Dr Alejandro “Mandu” married 1) Carmen Tuason 2) Ramona “Moning” Hernandez; Teresa “Titic”; Filomena “Filomenita”; Beatriz "Botones" married Alfredo “Pocholo” Gonzales; Jose “Pepito” married Rosario “Charito” Lobregat. “La Inocencia” by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo y Padilla devolved to the family of Benito “Bitong” Legarda y de la Paz and Filomena “Nena” Roces y Gonzalez. It passed on to his son Dr Alejandro “Mandu” Legarda y Roces married to 1) Carmen Tuason 2) Ramona Hernandez. Dr Alejandro “Mandu” installed it in the living room of his 1938 Andres Luna de San Pedro designed Art Deco-style house at # 315 San Rafael street, San Miguel, Manila. (For some fifteen years from 2000-2015, much of Manila admired “La Inocencia” during their memorable lunches and dinners at the much-loved and acclaimed “La Cocina de Tita Moning” at the Legarda-Hernandez residence managed by granddaughter Suzette Legarda Montinola.) About “La Inocencia” : Who is “La Inocencia”? Lisa Guerrero Nakpil Unlike his contemporary and sometime arch-rival Juan Luna y Novicio, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo y Padilla was reputed to paint the same woman over and over again. Luna reveled in capturing the likenesses of different women, from petulant gypsies to elegant marquesas. He painted women, young and old, chulas, matrons, pretty Parisiennes perched in cafés to the ice-y daughters of Spanish grandees and governor-generals at the opera. He painted his fiancees, of no matter how short a period, and his first (and last) wife. He is even suspected of painting a private, very personal portrait of Queen Regent Cristina, of whom he made various official portraits that still hang in Spanish local museums. Resurreccion Hidalgo, on the other hand, seems to have been imprinted with his long-time model and companion of a lifetime, Maria Yrritia. He is, incidentally, not famous for the portraits he accomplished but rather his landscapes and multiple allegorical works, choosing instead to situate his female subjects — and they are all thought to be Yrritia — in moonlit forests or by the sea. (The moon and water were both favorite themes of his.) Maria Yrritia has been described as a “French woman”, which would then place her in Paris around 1884 when Resurreccion Hidalgo first moved to that city. Her name, however, is redolent of the Basque country in northern Spain which sits very close to border of France, so she may indeed have begun her relationship with Resurreccion Hidalgo while he was in Madrid, where he arrived in 1879. He never gave her up, although he never married her. There is a portrait entitled, “En El Jardin” (In the Garden), at the Lopez Memorial Museum, dated 1885. It pre-dates “La Inocencia”, painted in 1901, by 16 years, and appears to be the same dark-haired beauty with rounded eyebrows and slightly pursed lips. Could “La Inocencia”, as poetically described by its title, be an idealized, younger version of La Yrritia, pictured in a Parisian garden? Art historian Ramon N. Villegas has been quoted as saying that Maria Yrritia was a blonde, based on the few remaining photographs of her extant. He describes the young woman in “La Inocencia” as “coltish and almost Celtic” but does see a common “Lolita-like” air between the two works. Villegas prefers to subscribe to the idea that she is a composite of the various European nymphs of the period, of which they were a favorite romantic idiom. The identity of “La Inocencia” will no doubt remain a mystery for generations to come, as ethereal as her beauty, but what is certain is that this is a work of eternal magnificence. FÉLIX RESURRECCIÓN Hidalgo Y PADILLA (February 21, 1855 – March 13, 1913) is hailed as one of the great Filipino master painters of the late 19th century. Hidalgo was born to wealth and privilege in Binondo, Manila to Eduardo Resurrección Hidalgo and Maria Barbara Padilla. Félix was educated at the University of Santo Tomas. He studied law, which he never finished, receiving a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. He was simultaneously enrolled at Manila’s art academy, the Escuela de Dibujo y Pintura. In 1876, he showed his “La banca” (The Native Boat), “Vendedora de lanzones” (Lanzones Vendor) and other paintings at the Teatro Circo de Bilibid in Manila, before they were sent to the United States Centennial Exposition that year in Philadelphia. It was in that exposition that Simon Flores y de la Rosa’s work “La Orquestra” (The Orchestra) was awarded a silver medal, the first time a Filipino work gained international recognition. In 1877, Resurrección Hidalgo was awarded second place in the contest for best cover design for the deluxe edition of Fr. Manuel Blanco’s “Flora de Filipinas” (Plants of the Philippines). In 1878, he painted the expressive “Los mendigos” (The Beggars.) In 1879, Hidalgo left for Spain as the Ayuntamiento of Manila’s pensionado or government scholar in fine arts. In Madrid, he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes. Together with Juan Luna y Novicio, Hidalgo inspired members of the Philippine reform movement which included José Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Mariano Ponce and Graciano López Jaena, and the other Filipino expatriates in Europe. Luna garnered a gold medal, and Hidalgo a silver medal in the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts prompting Rizal to toast the two painters’ good health and citing their win as evidence that Filipinos and Spaniards were equals. Hidalgo’s winning piece was “Las virgenes Cristianasexpuestas alpopulacho” (The Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace), The painting, now part of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas art collection, shows a group of men mocking nearly naked female Christians martyrs, one of whom is seated in the foreground, head bowed in misery. At the Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas in Madrid in 1887, organized by the Spanish Overseas Ministry, Hidalgo exhibited two major works. These were “La barca de Aqueronte” (The Boat of Charon), 1887, and “Laguna estigia” (The Styx), 1887, for which he received a gold medal. “La barca” was again shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and was awarded a silver medal by an international jury. In 1891 it was accorded a diploma of honor at the Exposición General de Bellas Artes of Barcelona. This painting also received a gold medal in the International Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid during the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. Hidalgo exhibited “Adios al sol” (Farewell to the Sun), 1891 at the Exposición Internacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid in that year and “El crepusculo” (“The Dawn”), 1893, at the Universal Exposition in Chicago, also in that year. He showed both paintings again at the Exposición Artistica de Bilbao in August 1894. At the Exposición Regional de Filipinas in Manila in January 1895, Hidalgo showed his paintings although he did not come home. Perhaps he did not do so because he was preparing “Oedipus y Antigone” (Oedipus and Antigone), “El violinista” (The Violinist), and other works for exhibition at the Salon at Champs-Elysées, Paris. Hidalgo received a gold medal for his overall participation at the Universal Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904. His “El violinista” was accorded a gold medal. In 1912, he finally visited Manila after 30 years upon his mother’s request. She had wanted him to be with her in her last days but after six months he went back to Paris. The following year, Resurrección Hidalgo died in Barcelona. — Ramon N. Villegas