{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":14605,"auction_id":14,"set_id":26,"lot_number":"12","artist":"Alfredo Carmelo (1896 - 1985)","title":"Farewell at Barcelona Port","starting_price":1600000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated XII - 1974 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"28\" x 45\" (72 cm x 116 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Artist's estate","exhibited":"Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Alfredo Carmelo: \nHis Life and Art, Manila, 1990","literature":"Guillermo, Alice. Alfredo Carmelo: His Life and Art. \nMetropolitan Museum of Manila. Manila. 1990. p. 43.","write_up":"Alfredo Casas Carmelo was the country’s foremost painter of ships and seas. His first obsession, however, was with the sky which led him to study aviation in Germany —and which, in turn, led to another preoccupation that would make also make him famous, lithography. (His father Don Eulalio, was founder of the venerable printing firm, Carmelo & Bauermann.)
Carmelo would study at the Leipzig School of Lithography until World War I cut his education short.
He would return to Manila to study with Don Rafael Enriquez, who was then the Director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes in the capital. (Carmelo was the nephew of Don Rafael and counted as his relative Félix Resurrección Hidalgo.) Although he would be at the academy for less than a year, Carmelo is said to have begun painting even as a child.
His works would soon be featured in a series of exhibitions in the United States, from Los Angeles (1947), Washington (1948), and New York (1952), and Madrid (1951.)
Building on this reputation, he would have his first one man show at the Philippine National Museum under the auspices of the influential Art Association of the Philippines; and he would begin winning prizes at its competitions, bellwethers of Filipino talent. His entry “Bergantiu Goleta Waiting for the Tide” would take the Third Prize in the Conservative category in the AAP Semi Annual Art Exhibition in 1953. (This would be the same year that Fernando Zóbel and Anita Magsaysay-Ho would take first and second place in the Modern category.) In 1954, Carmelo would receive a special award for “Best Marine Painting” at the AAP’s 7th Annual Art Exhibition, with the entry “Cedric the Saxon.”
In ‘Farewell at Barcelona Port’, Carmelo remains true to form combining his interest for history, nautical lore and penchant for the accurate detailing of the various ships and boats he would depict. In this work, he paints the ancient Spanish port at the turn of the century, seemingly after a light rain fall. It charmingly highlights a small group of people bidding their friends goodbye. Three different ships, from a full masted schooner, a skiff to a ferryboat for which Barcelona was famous for, are faithfully portrayed.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Alfredo Carmelo (1896 - 1985) Farewell at Barcelona Port signed and dated XII - 1974 (lower right) oil on canvas 28\" x 45\" (72 cm x 116 cm)