Provenance: Private Collection, Madrid, Spain

ABOUT THE WORK

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. The directionally hatched brushstrokes and angular definition of planes; the powerful effects of color and simplification of decorative shapes are almost Fauvist 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.