We wish to thank Ilene Susan Fort, Ph.D., F. A. Bridgman authority and Curator Emerita, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for confirming the authenticity of this lot and preparing the accompanying essay.

Provenance:
(possibly) Collection of A. A. Low, Brooklyn, by 1873-74 (as Scene in Pyrénées)

Exhibited:
(possibly) Brooklyn Art Association, December 1873 exhibition, no. 284 (as Scene in Pyrénées)

Lot note:
It is not known how many times the American artist Frederick A. Bridgman passed through the Pyrénées mountain range on his way to North Africa, but he may have had at least two extended painting sessions there during the summer-autumn of 1872 and 1873. Despite his previous residence in Brittany, where he recorded the traditional lifestyle of Pont-Aven, the artist was still enamored by the charming architecture, costumes and customs of European peasantry. For a time his base was the town of Ustariz-pres-Bayonne near the Atlantic coast and on the French-Spanish border. He painted there at least three street scenes with the mountain range as a backdrop-- variations on a theme--one of which was Basses Pyrénées, 1873; he set them all along a road lined with traditional half-timbered basque buildings, covered with white-wash and adorned with traditional dark green shutters and other painted wood details. Revealing the influence of the well-known Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny, whom he met earlier in Paris or Spain, as well as his own initial experience working under the brilliant light of North Africa, Bridgman easily captured the glare effect of natural light illuminating the Ustariz buildings and figures. As would be expected of an academically trained artist, Bridgman painted the scene simply with clear and recognizable contours. 

In the street of Basses Pyrénées, Bridgman recorded town life as a woman herding her horse and two bulls stops to chat with another local female. Figurative staffage is the main difference between Basses Pyrénées and the most famous of the Ustaritz street paintings, Un Voyage aux Pyrénées, also known as The Diligence, done the same year. Bridgman exhibited the much larger canvas first in Paris at the 1874 annual Salon and later that year in Liverpool where it was purchased by the Walker Art Gallery. In The Diligence, Bridgman replaced the gossiping females of Basses Pyrénées with a large coach filled with tourists rumbling quickly down the street. Although The Diligence was a personal memory of Bridgman’s travels, the smaller, slightly more intimate Basses Pyrénées retains the freshness and joy the artist experienced watching the neighborly interactions of traditional French life.