{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":38527,"auction_id":53,"set_id":81,"lot_number":"198","artist":"Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo  (1855-1913)","title":"A Lady in the Moonlight","starting_price":6000000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left)","medium":"Oil On Canvas","size":"37 1/2” x 20” (95 cm x 51 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"When Felix Resureccion Hidalgo died in 1913 leaving a fortune of real estate, shares of stocks, and paintings, leaving without legitimate descendants nor recognized natural heirs, the mother of the deceased, Dona Maria Barbara Padilla y Flores, inherits. The next year she dies leaving the Hidalgo-Padilla fortune to her heirs.  The bulk of the paintings then went to the “sobrinos” 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. Leon Gallery is privileged to offer at auction this highly important and very well-preserved work by Felix Resureccion-Hidalgo. In its original glass frame, in oil on canvas, the work will finally cede from within the family’s possession for over 100 years (1913-2017)","exhibited":null,"literature":"Literature: Roces, Alfredo, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo & The Generation of 1872, Eugenio Lopez Foundation Inc., Pasig City, 1998, p. 233 (illustrated)","write_up":"Beautiful, aristocratic, yet demure, this superb portrait, a relatively simple composition, demonstrates why Hidalgo was a great portraitist of his generation — and of several generations to come. \nDespite the furor over the Impressionists in 1884, Hidalgo remained a classicist, preferring to work in the style recognized by the Art  Establishment.\nIn the Exposicion Regional de Filipinas in Manila in January, 1895, Resureccion Hidalgo was represented by his paintings done in the grand  romantic manner.  Eric Torres writes: “ A museum exhibition of his introspective landscapes and seascapes would finally reveal the range  of various subtle nuances by which Hidalgo celebrates the secretive, sensuous moods of nature and its marriage with gentle allegory (Frenchified Graeco Roman, to be sure, a la Puvis de Chavannes).  Such a marriage is exemplified in entires to the 1893 Salon Pares de Barcelona, Psyche and Primavera.’” \nMaria Yrittia, the model, stands slightly curving  back, yet totally composed, gazing out from the picture with a certain, characteristically  Spanish melancholy in her countenance.  Not content with showing merely the outward form of his subject, Hidalgo has produced a delicately magnificent study of character. \nIt is of note that he used the same model, Maria Yrittia, for over thirty years.  Her dress cuts a strong silhouette that sets itself apart from the fashions of the era. \nYet Hidalgo need not depict a detailed physiognomy to convey demureness and petulance.  Hidalgo caps the boldly geometric silhouette of the long dress, fanlike sleeve and all, with an exotically veiled head which hints of the aesthetic of the orientalists, who, as they became known,  represented a particular flowering of nineteenth century European painting.  Beyond their easels lay glowing horizons of exoticism, drama and all the sensuous romanticism the legendary East offered to bemused European painters, is pleasantly ironic that the veiled head and the sharply and geometrically outlined silhouette of the dress give the corporeal presence of the lady some hints of the intangible, suffused with otherworldliness. \nWhen we think of the grace and elegance of late 19th century towards the turn of the twentieth century, fashions, we often think of a specific painting by Monet, Degas or Renoir, yet her veil makes her unmistakably Spanish as Sorolla’s women in its luminous yet somber palette refined to a pearly softness, and rich detailing. \nThe work fully typifies Hidalgo’s portrait technique: soft edges and an equally soft light which is cast on the subject.  The delicacy with which the lacey outfit is made to compliment on the subject’s face is masterly.  The surrounding dark background does not quite seem real: the background is immaterial as long as the viewer focuses on the beauty of her face.  The delicate pallor of Maria Yrittia’s face is almost luminous in the weak, evening light. \nThe moonlight provides an ideal pretext for an image that is strikingly poetic, elegiac, melancholic and slightly unreal. \nThe figure is frontally but not harshly lit. The whiteness of her skin shines out, defying the viewer to pay attention to any other aspect of the painting. \nThe lacy details of the dress are painted with a softness and blurring of definition...wrapping the subject in an aura of mystery: languorous, and free of self-consciousness. \nThere is that romantic allure of woodlands, secret coves and Arcadian scenes where a misty solitary maiden is glimpsed. It is a fine example of the work of a master painter at the height of his powers.  His lyricism is apparent when compared to Luna’s oeuvre, which seethes with dramatic tension.\nOf Hidalgo’s art, Rizal had much respect and admiration; “…in the painting of Hidalgo throbs the purest sentiment, an idealized expression of melancholy...Hidalgo is all light-color and harmony, feeling, limpidness like the Philippines in the calm, moonlit nights, in her serene days with her horizons inviting contemplation.”","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo</strong> (1855-1913)<br /><em>A Lady in the Moonlight</em><br />signed (lower left)<br />oil on canvas<br />37 1/2&rdquo; x 20&rdquo; (95 cm x 51 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":16000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":16000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":18688000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":37065,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/53/81/lot/198.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":197,"next":199,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}