{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":26538,"auction_id":31,"set_id":52,"lot_number":"106","artist":"Félix Resurrección Hidalgo (1855 - 1913)","title":"Boceto (Study) of Per Pacem et Libertatem (Through Peace and Liberty)","starting_price":3000000,"signed_dated":"ca. 1903","medium":"graphite on paper","size":"24” x 14 1/2” (60 cm x 36 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"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 Dona 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 Dona Rosario Paz de Perez, children of his sister Pilar who was married to Maximo Paz.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"“Félix Resurrección Hidalgo is acknowledged as one of the great Filipino painters of the late 19th century,” declared art historian Ramon N. Villegas in the book Filipinos in the Gilded Age (published by León Gallery in 2016). Before he immersed himself in painting, Villegas noted, Resurrección Hidalgo earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the Universidad de Sto. Tomas in Manila, and intended to go on to law. Instead, he continued with courses at the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura, where he excelled. In 1877, the Ayuntamiento of Manila sent him on an art scholarship to Spain. He stayed in Europe for most of the rest of his life.
There was a fundamental difference between Juan Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo that José Rizal would grasp when he toasted the two artistic warriors at a famous banquet in their honor, after winning respectively the gold and the silver at the Madrid Salon of 1884.
Our national hero would declare, “In Luna’s (works) are the shadows, the contrasts, the moribund lights, mystery, and the terrible, like the reverberation of the dark tempests of the tropics, the lightning and the roaring eruptions of its volcanoes; for that reason Hidalgo is all light, color, harmony, feeling, limpidity, like the Philippines on her moonlight nights, on her tranquil days, with her horizons that invite meditation, and where the infinite lulls. And both, despite being so distinct in themselves, in appearance at least, are fundamentally one… in reflecting on their palette the splendiferous rays of unfading glory with which they surround their Native Land.”
Resurrección Hidalgo was enamored with light, wind, and most of all, water. This would give his works a dreamlike quality that contrasted with his razor-sharp technical perfection. For Luna, it would be the earth, metal, and all the martial arts, being himself an expert swordsman and duelist.
In the hands of the ilustrados of the nineteenth century, their artistry once devoted entirely to the religious would evolve into high art and, finally, into a loud cry for liberty.
After the tumult of the Treaty of Paris, which ceded the Philippines from Spain to the United States for $20 Million and the formal cessation of the Philippine-American War, Félix Resurrección Hidalgo was adopted as one of the favored artists of the new colonial dispensation.
He was commissioned to create a magnus opus to be presented at the Philippine pavilion of the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. (The Lopez Musuem’s catalogue notes for its own boceto of Per Pacem et Libertatem report that, “The monumental work measured twenty feet in height and fifteen feet in width, for which Hidalgo was paid twenty-five thousand francs, by the Philippine Exposition Board. The amount in today’s currency, would total to about one hundred thirty eight thousand dollars—the price of elegantly presented propaganda.”)
In it, the Philippines offers the olive branch of peace in one hand and lays down her bolo in the other. She seems to beseech Columbia, the personification of the United States of America and liberty itself, who floats above her, dressed in Joan of Arc-like armor with her sword mercifully sheathed. Around them are cherubic youths symbolizing the arts, education, trade and industry which will only be allowed to thrive in a hallowed time of fealty.
Per Pacem et Libertatem would eventually be installed in the Ayuntamiento de Manila but would be lost in the catastrophic bombing of the capital city in World War II. All that remains of this marvel are a few photographs, (one belonging to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, who made her way to the Philippines on a tour of Asia.) The only other remnants are a handful of glorious bocetos.
Hovering over the Per Pacem et Libertatem tableau is an ethereal figure holding the light of knowledge. In the boceto at hand, she is the only figure : A goddess-like figure, her locks flowing freely in the wind, holding up a shield. It is emblazoned with the words “Walnera” which scholar Ramon Sunico opines must be a place-name akin to the warriors’ heaven, Valhalla. On the shield are olive branches as well as a physician’s cup, entwined with snakes, possibly symbolizing the healing balm of peace. A star punctuates its the lower point. The shield, however, is not of the traditional design of a knight’s coat of arms and appears to be completely from Hidalgo’s imagination. Words on left travel along a star’s ray of light and reads, in schoolboy Latin, “(You) Give to the People” and below it “Salutations (Greetings).” She holds aloft a chalice-like grail, implying the sanctity and elusiveness of that blessed state of peace.
This deity floats above tangled treetops amid the clouds. Above her head, halo-like, are the Roman numerals for ‘1898’, the year that the Americans sailed into Manila Bay and began to quench their own thirst for empire. (Lisa Guerrero Nakpil)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":4200000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":4200000,"userBid":5933,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":4905600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":23945,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/31/52/lot/106.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":105,"next":107,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}