{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":38810,"auction_id":54,"set_id":82,"lot_number":"89","artist":"Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1855-1913)","title":"Portrait of Nelly Boustead","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1889 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"24” x 20” (61 cm x 51 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Richard Boustead; Joaqiuin & Ma. Teresa Rovira; Gerona, Spain; Private Collection","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Felice Sta. Maria’s  book ”In Excelsis:  The Mission of Jose P. Rizal”  features a photo of a naughtily smiling Jose Rizal with Felix  Resurreccion Hidalgo at the center and to their right is Madame  Nelly Boustead, also known as the eighth of the nine women who caught the heart of the famed doctor cum writer.  Rizal would have married her had she not insisted that he renounce his Catholic faith and become a Protestant. \nPablo Trillana III’s book “The Loves of Rizal and other Essays  on Philippine History, Art, and Public Policy” features a portrait  of Nellie Boustead wherein she wears a dress very similar to the  outfit in the painting by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.\nDr. Jose P. Rizal led a peripatetic life, both career-wise and in matters of the heart.  His time chart of the heart says it all:\n1877.  Rizal’s supposed first love, Segunda Katigbak, was but  a harmless flirtation between a fourteen-year-old convent-bred girl and a teenaged Rizal.  Segunda was already betrothed to a Manuel Luz of Lipa, Batangas, when they met.\n1878.  Rizal’s supposed affection for lady number two, Leonor  Valenzuela, age fourteen, was a love story made up by his gossipy friend, Jose Cecilio (Chenggoy), who derived pleasure from titillating Rizal.\n1878-1890.  Leonor Rivera is thought to be the inspiration for the character of Maria Clara in Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.   Rivera and Rizal first met in Manila when Rivera was only fourteen years old.  When Rizal left for Europe on May 3, 1882, Rivera was sixteen years of age.  Their correspondence began when Rizal left  a poem for Rivera saying farewell.\nThe correspondence between Rivera and Rizal kept Rizal focused  on his studies in Europe.  They employed codes in their letters  because Rivera's mother did not favor Rizal.  A letter from Mariano Katigbak dated June 27, 1884, referred to Rivera as Rizal's  \"betrothed\".  Katigbak described Rivera as having been greatly  affected by Rizal's departure, frequently sick because of insomnia.\nJose Rizal was never the preferred choice of the mother of his third love, fifteen year old Leonor Rivera.  The mother confiscated all the correspondences between Leonor and Rizal.  But their long distance attempts notwithstanding, Leonor Rivera is considered by many  as Rizal’s true love.\n1884.  In Madrid, Rizal courted lady number four, Consuelo Ortiga  y Reyes, age eighteen, the daughter of Señor Pablo Ortiga y Rey, who was once mayor of Manila and who owned the apartment where the Circulo Hispano Filipino met regularly. \n1886.  Rizal, now aged twenty-seven, an author and a doctor had  returned to the Philippines in 1887, but because of his Noli Me Tangere, he incurred the wrath of the Spanish authorities.  He had to leave  in 1888 via Japan to the U.S. and then Europe.  In Japan, he met lady number five, a Samurai’s daughter, O Sei-San, aged twenty-two.\n1888.  The romance Rizal indulged in while staying in London,  in particular, house number thirty-seven Chalcot Crescent, London,  was an innocent pastime, not real love.  Rizal’s lady number six,  was Gertrude Beckett, nineteen, the landlord’s daughter.\n1889.  In Brussels, Belgium, Rizal lived in the house of the Jacoby sisters:  Marie and Suzanne.  Marie was forty-eight and Suzanne, forty-five.  Rizal became attracted to their eighteen-year-old niece named Suzanne Jacoby Thill – lady number seven.\n1891.  In Paris, Rizal fell in love with lady number eight, nineteen  year old Nelly Boustead, a Filipina of mixed blood, whose father  (Filipino-Anglo French) Edward Boustead owned a villa in Biarritz.   By this time, Rizal was ready to love again, because he received news that Leonor Rivera, his arranged fiancé, had married Charles Kipping,  a British engineer working on the Dagupan railway.\nRizal (now free from a romantic engagement) did propose marriage  to Nelly.  He was anxious to start his own family at age thirty.  Nelly was a good candidate.  Her mother was from the Genato family in Manila.  She was well-educated, well bred, very intelligent and good-looking.\nMany think that Nelly Boustead was not Rizal’s greatest romance,  because from the very start the courtship encountered many  complications.  First, Antonio Luna thought Nelly was favoring him.  Luna and Rizal almost came to a sword duel, but Luna withdrew and gave up the suit.  In the end, Nelly, who was a Protestant, gave some marriage conditions that Rizal could not accept — to renounce his Catholic faith and become a Protestant.  Some even think that what Rizal felt for Nelly Boustead was more a Rizal licking-of-wounds-love after having been spurned by Leonor Rivera, whom many consider  as his great love.\nIn Hidalgo’s painting of Madame Boustead, she is dressed up for the occasion, her dress and overall air are signs of genteel affluence.  The subject has a cooly self possessed air that the viewer from any period would think of as nineteenth century Salon sensibility.\nTo the very Spanish somberness of the grayish black backdrop wall,  Hidalgo brings an unexpected chromatic intensity in the pinks of the dress.  If Rizal’s marriage to Boustead had succeeded, Rizal would have become a practicing ophthalmologist in Paris and eventfully would have become a Frenchman.  But still to come was his ninth and last love, the eighteen year old Josephine Bracken.\nYet when Rizal was once quoted about the art of Hidalgo:  “…in the painting of Hidalgo throbs the purest sentiment…”  who knows,  he must have had the portrait of Nelly Boustead in mind.\nSources: - Pablo S. Trillana, The Loves of Rizal and Other Essays on Philippine History, Art and Public Policy, Quezon City, Philippines, New Day Publishers, copyright 2000. - Felice Sta. Maria, In Excelsis:  The Mission of Jose P. Rizal, Humanist and Philippine National Hero, Published by Studio 5 Designs, copyright 1996.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo</strong> (1855-1913) <br /><em>Portrait of Nelly Boustead</em><br />signed and dated 1889 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />24&rdquo; x 20&rdquo; (61 cm x 51 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":7000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":7000000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":8176000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":37217,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/54/82/lot/89.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":88,"next":90,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}