{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":26567,"auction_id":31,"set_id":52,"lot_number":"138","artist":"School of Félix Resurrección Hidalgo ( (1855 - 1913)","title":"After Hidalgo, La Banca","starting_price":1600000,"signed_dated":"dated 1886 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"26” x 44” (66 cm x 112 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Bilbao, Spain","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"In 1876, Félix Resurrección Hidalgo, all of 21 years of age, was at the very beginning of the trajectory that would make him one of the most acclaimed Filipino painters of the 19th century and for the first part of the 20th.
In that year and on that very first step on the road to greatness, several of Hidalgo’s paintings would be selected for exhibition at the Teatro Circo de Bilibid in preparation to their being sent to America’s very first world’s fair, the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia to celebrate the United States’ 100th year of signing of the Declaration of Independence. (His works would be in the august company of Simon Flores, a gifted painter who was a generation ahead and 15 years his senior.)
Unfortunately, only a handful of Hidalgo’s works from this ‘Philippine period’ remain, secreted away in private collections in the Philippines—as well as in public collections in Spain, including at the Prado, its national museum.
One of them is the legendary La Banca, in the Dr. Eleuterio Pascual collection, and currently on loan to the Singapore National Gallery. It is a work of ethereal beauty and features a lady of some social standing, shaded by a parasol, and about to take her seat in the boat. Following her is a washerwoman holding a child with a religious necklace around her neck. A man in trousers rolled up to his knees, revealing his daily occupation, steadies the boat. The boatman is muscular and bare-chested but wears an ornamented, silver-tipped hat. The waters is mirror-like in its calmness. In the distance, bamboo groves and distant thatched houses glimmer.
It is easy to imagine how the affection and adulation for Hidalgo’s fame and honor would have generated a series of works by students at the Academia. Their main course of education—as with all European art schools—was the copying of works of the masters.
Hidalgo himself had been enrolled at the prestigious Academia de Dibujo y PIntura (or the Manila Academia). There, he would come under the tutelage of Agustin Sáez, the director of the school, and would quickly become one of his favorites. Sáez himself could have caused the creation of this work to commemorate the achievements of one of his favorite pupils.
In 1879, he would leave for Spain on a scholarship in fine arts from the Ayuntamiento of Manila at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando de Madrid. Félix Resurrección Hidalgo would never look back and would, for the most part of his life, remain in Europe, fulfilling his destiny as one of our most important painters of that era. Much as he adored his country, he would never again paint a scene of the Philippines. (Lisa Guerrero Nakpil)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3000000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":3504000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":23999,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/31/52/lot/138.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":137,"next":139,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}