Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s homage to youth and love
Any work by either Juan Luna or Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo that enters the art market is seen as a public event, a celebration. They are, after all, two of our foundational painters, and no collector who considers himself serious would let the opportunity to acquire a work by either of the two artists pass by. Works with questionable provenance if not outright forgeries, however, have recently crept into the market, and the art world has expectedly become cautious and vigilant.
A handful of paintings by the masters in private collection need not entail such complicated paperwork to establish their authenticity since they have been in the public eye all along, with people having — and recording — their memory of them. The provenance is so ironclad that the work might as well have emerged from a museum. Such a rarity is “La Inocencia” by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, the star lot in Leon Gallery’s concluding auction for the year, the Kingly Treasures, to be held on Dec. 3, Saturday, at the Leon Gallery, Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Sts., Legazpi Village, Makati City. No painting of such significance has emerged in recent memory.
“La Inocencia” is a portrait of Maria Yrritia which Hidalgo painted in Paris in 1901. She was the subject of Hidalgo’s art and ardor. After more than a century, she looks at us with liquid eyes, her lips as red as the flower that she holds. Swaddled in a yellow diaphanous dress, she holds a clutch of fabric by her waist, revealing the luminous skin of her one bare arm. A soft hollow nests below her throat. Her background is a forest rendered impressionistically, as though she has stepped from the world of dreams into ours. An artwork of its own, the frame was by Isabelo Tampinco, evoking a motif out of the flower in the painting.
“La Inocencia” was acquired by Benito Cosme Legarda y Tuason and his wife Teresa de la Paz viuda de Severo Tuason. For many years, it was the centerpiece of their grand home at 964 R Hidalgo Street, Manila.
Those who had the good fortune to dine at La Cocina de Tita Moning managed by Suzette Legarda Montinola in the Legarda-Hernandez ancestral mansion in San Miguel, Manila between 2000 to 2015 would have seen the painting. “La Inocencia” has never left the family. According to Augusto “Toto” M R Gonzalez III in the Kingly Treasures catalog, “‘La Inocencia’ was acquired by Felix Hidalgo’s friend, contemporary, and neighbor Benito Cosme Legarda y Tuason and his wife Teresa de la Paz viuda de Severo Tuason. It was for many years the cynosure of the large “sala” of “La Casa Grande,” their storied residence at # 964 R Hidalgo Street…
“It was at ‘La Casa Grande’ that they raised their three children Consuelo, Benito III, and Rita. Benito III ‘Bitong’ married Filomena ‘Nena’ Roces y Gonzalez; Consuelo ‘Titang’ married Mauro Prieto y Gorricho; and Rita ‘Chata’ married 1) L. James Donaldson-Sim and 2) Dr. Benito Valdes y Salvador, thus completing the interrelations of four of Old Manila’s most prominent families, the Tuason-Legarda-Prieto-Valdes clan.
“Benito III ‘Bitong’ Legarda y de la Paz married Filomena ‘Nena’ Roces y Gonzalez and had seven children: Benito IV ‘Ben’ married Trinidad Fernandez; Rosario ‘Bombona’ married Dr. Basilio Valdes; Dr. Alejandro “Mandu” married 1) Carmen Tuason and 2) Ramona ‘Moning’ Hernandez; Teresa ‘Titic’; Filomena ‘Menang’; Beatriz married Alfredo ‘Pocholo’ Gonzales; Jose ‘Pepito’ married Rosario ‘Charing’ Lobregat.”
Since 1938, it occupied pride of place at the Legarda-Hernandez ancestral mansion in San Miguel, Manila. It was the highlight of La Cocina de Tita Moning, the exclusive restaurant that prepared heirloom recipes, which ran between 2000 to 2015.
The painting was bequeathed to “Benito ‘Bitong’ Legarda y de la Paz and Filomena ‘Nena’ Roces y Gonzalez. It passed on to his son Dr Alejandro ‘Mandu’ Legarda y Roces married to 1) Carmen Tuason and 2) Ramona Hernandez. Dr. Alejandro ‘Mandu’ installed it in the living room of his 1938 Andres Luna de San Pedro (or Pablo Antonio)-designed Art Deco-style house at # 315 San Rafael Street, San Miguel, Manila.”
Jaime Ponce de Leon, director of Leon Gallery, could not help but be ecstatic with this once-in-a-lifetime find. “When I personally retrieved the work from the sala of the Legarda Mansion in San Miguel district, my heart was pounding with the immense joy at being the custodian of this masterpiece till it finds its way to its new owner,” he says. “It has hung on the same wall since 1938 when Don Alejandro Legarda moved to the exclusive neighborhood around Malacañan Palace.”
Unlike the woman in the painting, the model, Maria Yrritia, met a tragic end. When Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo brought her to Manila, she was rejected by the painter’s mother, Barbara Padilla de Resurreccion Hidalgo. The couple would never set foot together again in Manila.
When the painter died some 30 years later, Maria Yrritia accompanied “his remains and belongings back to Manila,” says Gonzales. “She boarded a ship bound for Spain but never made it back as the ship sunk off South Africa.” But in “La Innocencia,” Hidalgo’s muse is forever young, brimming with vitality and innocence, provoked to a soft smile as she puts a flower near her lips by her dear Felix.
