Felix Resurrection Hidalgo
Luz de la Luna / Moonlight
FELIX RESURRECTION HIDALGO Y PADILLA
Manila, February 21, 1855 – Barcelona, March 13, 1913
Oil on canvas,
99.06 x 116.84 cm or 39 x 46 in.
Signed lower left
Provenance:
• Private Collection, San Franciscoi, California U.S.A.
• Private Collection, Ojai, California U.S.A.
• Formerly part of Mr. William Hubbell Collection. San Francisco, California.
William Hubble is the great-grandson of U.S. Consul George W. Hubbell, founder of the Hubbell Trading Company in the Philippines.
Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s seascape echoes the artist’s fascination with the violence of the sea. This work of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo utilizes not only the painterly quality of oil, but also the singular movement of brushstrokes to create motion. Just like his famous work “La Barca de Aqueronte”, which exemplifies this through the sway and churn of water and whitewater bubbling around a mournful boatman, this seascape depicts foul weather, but not too gloomy for the viewer to see the lusty poetry in all that sea green tempest and hard driving, albeit invisible, wind driving the waves against a high craggy promontory in the background, which is painted sans distinct details.
The relationship of light and dark areas, the contrasts of movement, are largely responsible for the expressive power of the stormy shore. Hidalgo may have been a romantic but, he was also a realist in basing his art upon experiences directly perceived in nature.
The fluidity of the sea, whose color, light, and atmosphere changes from one moment to the next, was a ready equivalent of the flickering reveries of Hidalgo’s brush.
Hidalgo painted this monumental sea scene with the color effects boldly and facilely applied. In terms of quality and invention,Hidalgo’s achievements as a painter are unparalleled, and while Juan Luna is arguably the more famous of the two, some artcritics consider Hidalgo the more superior painter.
In principle, Hidalgo’s seascape combines the strengths of both Luminism and Impressionism, even if he adheres to neither.His dramatic, even impressionistic skies amid waves in some instances diverge from the becalmed seas of late 19th century painting, manifested best in the luminist style in the United States — which he never visited.
Luminism is characterizedby attention to detail and the hiding of brushstrokes, while impressionism is characterized by lack of detail and an emphasison brushstrokes.
Having taken up painting at the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura in Intramuros early in his career, he remaineda classicist, preferring to work in the style recognized by the art Establishment, despite the furor over the Impressionists in the Europe of 1884. Thus, Hidalgo’s depictions of the stormy sea mark one significant extreme of the vast range of Philippine art’s landscape traditions.
Felix Resurrection Hidalgo
Luz de la Luna / Moonlight
FELIX RESURRECTION HIDALGO Y PADILLA
Manila, February 21, 1855 – Barcelona, March 13, 1913
Oil on canvas,
99.06 x 116.84 cm or 39 x 46 in.
Signed lower left
Provenance:
• Private Collection, San Franciscoi, California U.S.A.
• Private Collection, Ojai, California U.S.A.
• Formerly part of Mr. William Hubbell Collection. San Francisco, California.
William Hubble is the great-grandson of U.S. Consul George W. Hubbell, founder of the Hubbell Trading Company in the Philippines.
Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s seascape echoes the artist’s fascination with the violence of the sea. This work of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo utilizes not only the painterly quality of oil, but also the singular movement of brushstrokes to create motion. Just like his famous work “La Barca de Aqueronte”, which exemplifies this through the sway and churn of water and whitewater bubbling around a mournful boatman, this seascape depicts foul weather, but not too gloomy for the viewer to see the lusty poetry in all that sea green tempest and hard driving, albeit invisible, wind driving the waves against a high craggy promontory in the background, which is painted sans distinct details.
The relationship of light and dark areas, the contrasts of movement, are largely responsible for the expressive power of the stormy shore. Hidalgo may have been a romantic but, he was also a realist in basing his art upon experiences directly perceived in nature.
The fluidity of the sea, whose color, light, and atmosphere changes from one moment to the next, was a ready equivalent of the flickering reveries of Hidalgo’s brush.
Hidalgo painted this monumental sea scene with the color effects boldly and facilely applied. In terms of quality and invention,Hidalgo’s achievements as a painter are unparalleled, and while Juan Luna is arguably the more famous of the two, some artcritics consider Hidalgo the more superior painter.
In principle, Hidalgo’s seascape combines the strengths of both Luminism and Impressionism, even if he adheres to neither.His dramatic, even impressionistic skies amid waves in some instances diverge from the becalmed seas of late 19th century painting, manifested best in the luminist style in the United States — which he never visited.
Luminism is characterizedby attention to detail and the hiding of brushstrokes, while impressionism is characterized by lack of detail and an emphasison brushstrokes.
Having taken up painting at the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura in Intramuros early in his career, he remaineda classicist, preferring to work in the style recognized by the art Establishment, despite the furor over the Impressionists in the Europe of 1884. Thus, Hidalgo’s depictions of the stormy sea mark one significant extreme of the vast range of Philippine art’s landscape traditions.