Salcedo Auctions concludes its 15th anniversary celebration, with Under the Tree: Wish List, a marquee sale led by exceptional works from artists whose practices were influenced by the great European art schools in Europe or whose experiences as expatriates shaped their practice.

At the forefront is Félix Martínez’s La Jota Manileña. Previously titled as Village Scene, The Philippines when it resurfaced in Stockholm, the 1886 painting now returns to Manila in what is regarded as one of the most significant recent rediscoveries in Philippine art.

Martínez, an accomplished contemporary of Juan Luna and Felix Ressurrecion Hidalgo, blended the academic traditions of Europe — first, through his studies under the Spanish Dominicans at the University of Santo Tomas and later serving as a professor at the La Escuela Práctica Profesional de Artes y Oficios de Manila -- with an intimate, luminous vision of Filipino life.

Where his peers tackled grand historical themes, Martínez devoted himself to village scenes animated by everyday imagery: market women, families along the riverbank, and dancers caught in mid-step. His works reveal not a colonial subject, but a nation vividly alive.