{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":14651,"auction_id":14,"set_id":26,"lot_number":"58","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Baluarte de Sta. Barbara, Fort Santiago","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1936 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"13\" x 16\" (33 cm x 41 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DOÑA NENE QUIMSON COLLECTION","coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Ms. Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"At age 16, Amorsolo would begin that inexorable climb that would make him the most famous artist of his time. He would win the first of his accolades, a contest organized by the an influential organization called the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas de Manila, for an exposition for the fine arts in 1908. The following year, he would enter the School of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, where his uncle — Fabian de la Rosa and heir to the classical old masters Luna and Resurrección Hidalgo — was also his mentor.
\nAmorsolo would be among the first six graduates to complete the then-five year course. Upon graduating, he would do well enough in a competitive examination to be recruited as a teacher in Elementary Drawing.
\nHe would work at the publishing firm of Cacho Hermanos where Jorge Pineda reigned supreme as the remarkable illustrator of the Renacimiento.
\nAmorsolo would next attract the attention of the industrialist Don Enrique Zóbel de Ayala, whose concerns among others included the distillery Ginebra San Miguel. Amorsolo’s label of the avenging archangel slaying the devil-serpent is still used to this day.
\nIn 1919, Zóbel de Ayala would bankroll his education in Spain in the vey same academy, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where all the Filipino greats had gone. Ramon N. Villegas noted that Amorsolo’s test results were so excellent that he was invited to join the academy not as a student but as an instructor.
\nAmorsolo would say in later years that it was in Madrid that his art became what it was always destined to become, basking in the dramatic draughtsmanship of Diego Velasquez and the impressionistic light of Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923).
\nIt was thanks to Sorolla that Amorsolo discovered the infinite possibilities of Philippine light : The rose-colored streaks of its sunrises and sunsets; the reflections on dappled rice fields; the shade of a gnarled mango tree; even the dancing flames of a campfire.
\nWe see Sorolla in the pale pink sky and opaque clouds of daybreak, its romantic haze speaking of the cool, dewy morning. The outlines of a bustling Manila and the boats moored on the Pasig River recede into a dreamlike memory.
\nWhat remains sharply in focus is one of the many bastions of Fort Santiago; this one is the august Baluarte de Sta. Barbara, so named after the patron saint of artillerymen.
\n“The Fort continued to serve as military headquarters early in the American regime,” describes the tome ‘Intramuros of Memory.’ “Structures were erected on top of the plataforma, formerly a bare stone platform for cannon guarding the river’s mouth.”
\nIt originally featured the Casa del Castellano, or the residence of the Fort’s commandant. (Beneath it was the storehouse for gunpowder, perhaps the safest place in the entire post.) Upon the Americans takeover of Intramuros in 1898, the new dispensation would begin renovations of this ancient Spanish fortification. The commandant’s house was enlarged and a second floor was added to the top of the bastion.
\nThe Baluarte is to be found at the end of Malecon Drive (today, named after Bonifacio) and Amorsolo introduces an interesting narrative to the landscape : unfinished huts, one near the water, the other outside the walls, hint at the other lives lived by Filipinos, while the American flag flies solitarily above.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972) Baluarte de Sta. Barbara, Fort Santiago signed and dated 1936 (lower right) oil on canvas 13\" x 16\" (33 cm x 41 cm)