Aragonese girls from Anso

After touring the regions of France, in the early 1860s Antigna went to Spain in northern Aragon, from where he brought back his first Iberian subjects, at a time when Spain was tending to replace Italy in the hearts of artists and the public alike. Une Fontaine à Anso was exhibited at the Salon of 1864, before being acquired by Ferdinand II of Portugal at the Universal Exhibition in Porto in 1865, along with a painting by Achille Zo, another advocate of Spanish aesthetics. At the 1872 Salon, Les Aragonaises à Ansó continued the subjects of the previous decade, with a bright, colorful palette characteristic of this period in the painter's career. Always eager to capture moments in the lives of people in the streets and fields, Antigna pauses to capture two young gypsies exchanging a few notes for a coin with two women resting in the shade of a vineyard. The frieze-like composition, in which the characters' profiles stand out as if in relief, the chromatic construction derived from traditional costumes, the offering of the chubby baby to the little beggar, whose bewildered look betrays the metal of the coin, whether gold or silver, are all part of a highly studied composition, more picturesque than ethnographic, unlike his contemporary Dehodencq. Throughout his career, Antigna sought to mix genres and elevate genre scenes, in particular, to the level of history painting, both in format and in the demands of his elaboration. The same models posed for other compositions, notably Serenade à Echo (Haut Aragon) from the 1866 Salon, six years earlier, demonstrating the work that goes on in the studio to reconstitute inspirations felt during travels, but whose final result is skilfully composed. The artist seduces us with the warm color that emanates from these Spanish compositions, in which sentiment is not absent. He shows a persistent taste for picturesque costumes, which he treats with great attention to detail, and which play as essential a role as the characters.