(Through Peace and Liberty [Study]) / 1903 / Oil on canvas / 64.8 x 46 cm / Artist: Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo / Eugenio Lopez Foundation collection

This small copy of the original mural, also titled Per Pacem et Libertatem, is the surviving oil study done by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo in Paris, and is currently with the Eugenio Lopez Museum and Library. The original mural, commissioned by the American Insular Government of the Philippines in 1903 for 10,000 pesos, was finished by Hidalgo in time for its participation in an exhibition at the 1904 Saint Louis International Exposition. The title alludes to the subject of the painting: the depiction of “peace and liberty under American dispensation” (Roces 1995, 170). Placed in the Marble Hall of the Ayuntamiento in time for the opening of the First Philippine Assembly in 1907, the mural was later destroyed along with other Hidalgo paintings during the Battle of Manila in 1945. This study was first owned by collector Alfonso T. Ongpin in the 1930s, and was then purchased by Don Eugenio Lopez alongside other works by Hidalgo in the 1960s. In 1972 it was donated to the Eugenio Lopez Foundation.

An allegorical painting depicting the colonial narrative of the Philippines surrendering her sovereignty to the United States in exchange for “civilizational tutelage,” Per Pacem et Libertatem is an example of the Beaux Arts manner of academic Salon painting using mythical figures as representations of virtues and nations. The Philippines is the woman with a bandaged head and broken sword on the lower left raising the olive leaf of peace to another woman representing America, clad in cuirass armor and holding a long sword, standing on the center-right. Naked male youths, one of whom stands behind America holding the stars and stripes banner, surround these two female figures and form a spiral line ascending in a cloud toward the upper center, where a third female figure personifying Education and Enlightenment holds aloft a torch. Along with this color study, several drawing sketches done in papel de marquilla (piece of paper) of the allegorical figures found in Per Pacem et Libertatem, including a complete composition study in chalk and charcoal, survive and are also now in the Eugenio Lopez Foundation collection, attesting to the attention to detail and exhaustiveness of studies that preoccupied Hidalgo in preparation for the now destroyed mural.