Text and photos by ELIZABETH LOLARGA
TRANQUIL and quiet beside Juan Luna, who shot and killed his wife and mother-in-law in a crime of passion that landed on the front pages of several newspapers in Paris, painter Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo is perceived to be a bit of a mama’s boy.
In his “Visualizing Philippine Art” lecture at the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library, historian Ambeth Ocampo showed how Hidalgo loved his mother, Maria Barbara Padilla, so that he painted her in her youth and old age. In deference to her, when he brought home his long-time lover, companion and muse from Europe to Manila, he set up Maria Yrrtia in the family’s resthouse in Santa Ana, not where his mother’s home was. He spent his days with Maria and went home to his mother at night.
A philosophy graduate of the University of Santo Tomas who wanted to become a priest, young Hidalgo studied painting with Agustin Saez and went on to win a silver medal for “Christian Virgins Exposed to the Public” at the 1884 Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid. Sadly, Ocampo reported, the original was destroyed. “What we have is a smaller copy in the Central Bank of the Philippines collection, also painted by Hidalgo.”
While in art school, he wrote many letters to Rizal discouraging him from going there. He complained of the crowded classrooms and dark studios. He had a photo, most probably staged and directed by him, showing him painting in his Paris studio with a model, his unsold works hung in the background and a copy of the propaganda paper La Solidaridad deliberately strewn on the floor.
Ocampo, who had visited the Paris City Fleury apartments, said they still exist and are rented out to painters and sculptors. The site has abundant north light that artists favor. He met an old lady there who still remembered Hidalgo for gifting her with a music box that had a twirling dancer on it.
Always mentioned in the same breath as Luna, Hidalgo was an introverted man. Ocampo said this temperament was reflected in his paintings of landscapes and seascapes that he described as “dreamy and quiet, with a fine finish where you don’t see the brushstrokes.”
He added that the tandem have been criticized for “missing the boat” by sticking to classical painting instead of joining the Impressionists who were the rage in Europe.
He said, “The two were academic painters at heart. They may have flirted with Impressionism by painting subjects at different times of the day, but they didn’t pursue it.”
Yrrtia’s is the recurring face in Hidalgo paintings like “La Modelo” and “Mi Amiga,” both of which are in the Lopez collection. Very little is known about her, but she seemed to be the spark in what otherwise was Hidalgo’s placid life.
When the painter returned home after more than a decade in Europe, he found Philippine sunlight too strong and took to wearing dark glasses. He complained of the heat and the mosquitoes. Eventually, he took to plein air painting, doing his Marikina country landscapes in the open.
He returned to Europe with Yrrtia, but his paintings didn’t sell well. He continued to send his mother letters urgently begging for money to be sent because “I’m only eating potatoes,” Ocampo said. He was unlike Luna who had enough commissioned work to keep him going apart from his Pardo de Tavera wife’s share of earnings from properties on Escolta, Manila.
Unlike also the more highly politicized Luna and brother Antonio whose lives are linked with Philippine history, Hidalgo’s involvement in the agitation against Spanish oppression could only be traced to a one-time participation in a student rally.
Ocampo said this was why when he was asked to write Hidalgo’s biography, it proved difficult for him. Something in Hidalgo’s spirit eluded him. Writer-artist Alfredo Roces took up where he left off with his book Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo and the Generation of 1872.
Hidalgo died of poor health abroad. Yrrtia brought his remains and personal belongings home, turning them over to the mother. She returned to Europe until the Hidalgo matriarch invited her to live in the Philippines. She accepted the offer and packed his paintings in her luggage. She died in a shipwreck off the coast of Africa. The paintings were also lost in that sea accident.
Ocampo said Luna or Hidalgo could have just been “any 19th-century painter.” Their triumphs in an international exposition and their lives that intersected with Rizal’s ensured their place in history.
For the lecture series and “Trajectories” exhibit of the masters at the museum, the background walls are in red, green and blue-green to approximate the colors of 19th-century painting salons. These colors complement the paintings and make them more alive.