(Fort Santiago Year 1908) / 1908 / Oil on canvas / 120.8 x 78.9 cm / Artist: Alfredo Carmelo / Private collection

Manila Bay, considered one of the most beautiful ports of the Orient at the turn of the century, was the setting of many of Carmelo’s paintings. This painting depicts Fort Santiago on the left with a brig and smaller brigantines. Offices were built above it during the American colonial period. It is known that only sail ships, such as brigantines and schooners, and not steamboats, were anchored by the fort. Cascos plied the area, and their merchant owners lived in them and picked up cargo from the anchored ships to be transported to the provinces. Just outside the walls of Fort Santiago and beside the wharf is a broad walk that serves as a promenade. Most of Carmelo’s paintings of Fort Santiago record a period of transition in water transport when sailing ships, such as two-masted brigantines and bateles, were found in the company of smoke-emitting steamboats and larger engine-powered vessels, along with the small bancas and cascos of the folk. In the background left is the commercial quarter where the foreign merchants built their offices by the port.

This painting is striking not only for its authentic detail of the ships at port and the fort with its genre figures, but also for its vivid atmosphere in the sky where rays of the sun emerge from a bank of gray clouds, and in the clear water that reflects the tall masts of the ships.