In The Well-Appointed Life sale, Salcedo Auctions’ first marquee event for 2025 which kicks off the premier auction house’s year-long 15th-anniversary celebration, an extraordinary masterpiece by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, titled Interior de una Casa, will be up for bidding. It is a highlight of the live and online auction on Saturday, 8 March 2025, a rare gem in the Filipino master’s body of work dominated by landscapes and seascapes, portraits of the European and the Filipino beau monde, and historical and allegorical depictions.
Hidalgo conveys the warmth of rustic domesticity in this oil on canvas, the unhurried atmosphere of a provincial cottage where a woman nonchalantly picks feathers off what will be the day’s meal, a flickering wood fire in the hearth behind her. The artist included details that add to the scene’s intimacy: the ample light streaming from the windows and glinting off the mantelpiece accouterments onto the pots and pottery hanging on the wall. It’s a space of warmth and calm.
Quaint details draw the eye to the fireplace, where a hunter’s rifle is lodged above a row of silver trays and where the red blooms on a single vase echo the faded crimson of a curtain beneath it. It shows Hidalgo’s gift for paradox in the composition, evoking comfort disrupted by armament and splashes of red as if to suggest the brutality that comes before the joyous feasting.

Don Eduardo Hidalgo Paz, the son of Felix Resurreccion Hildago’s sister, Pilar Paz
Interior de una Casa is an exceptional entry in Hidalgo’s oeuvre that comes from the estate of the artist’s mother, Dona Maria Barbara Padilla y Flores. On the year of Hildago’s passing in 1913, it was passed on to the artist’s nephew, Don Eduardo Hidalgo Paz, the son of the artist’s sister, Pilar Paz. One of Don Eduardo’s sons, the piece’s consignor and current owner, acquired the painting by luck of the draw.
“Nagbunutan kami (We drew lots),” the consignor recalls, “after my mother, Salvacion Serrano Paz, died in 2014.” “Ang swerte ko, nakuha ko yung gusto kong paintings (I was so lucky to have gotten the paintings that I liked)!”
On that fortuitous occasion, his daughter recalls the family gathering for lunch, after which Salvacion’s immediate heirs were called to a room where the drawing of lots transpired. “Everything was divided equally,” she recalls.

Don Eduardo with wife, Salvacion Serrano Paz, and their four children. The painting’s current owner,
Jose Mari Paz, stands next to his older brother.
It was as orderly as the first division of Hidalgo’s estate about a century ago, when his descendants became the owners of the wealth he left behind. “It wasn’t just the paintings,” the consignor’s daughter says. “There were properties also.” They included a five-door apartment in Binondo, which was rented out to Gerry Chua, the heir of Eng Bee Tin founder Chua Chiu Hong.
Throughout his life, Don Eduardo, a dentist, kept his inheritance in the house he built in New Manila. Even in the chaos of World War II, he saved all of the art, including Interior de una Casa. “How he managed to do that is a mystery to me,” the consignor says.
After Don Eduardo’s passing, his widow kept all of Hidalgo’s paintings because she liked looking at them. But after over a hundred years, its current owner deemed it best to unload some of Hidalgo’s works at Salcedo Auctions. “So that somebody can take care of it,” says the consignor’s daughter.
“We would like to share the painting with other collectors, ” adds the consignor, “who have a deep appreciation of Hidalgo’s art.”
Consignments are ongoing for ‘The Well-Appointed Life”’ live and online auction, set for Saturday, March 8, 2025, starting at 2 p.m. For inquiries, email info@salcedoauctions.com or phone +63 917 107 5581 | +63 917 591 2191 | +63 917 825 7449. For the latest updates, follow @salcedoauctions on Instagram and Facebook.