Acknowledged as one of the driving forces behind the renewal of painting in the Basque Country in the early twentieth century, Arteta is now considered the quintessential painter of Basque people and folk traditions. This subject matter led him towards a highly personal aesthetic that blended

 Classicism 

A movement in art, literature and music which advocated a return to the harmony, simplicity and balance that defined Classical Antiquity. In the arts, it emerged with the Renaissance, when it became the new aesthetic canon in the quest for perfection, and was the prevailing movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the appearance of

 Romanticism 

A cultural movement born in Germany and the United Kingdom in the late-eighteenth century, as a reaction against the Enlightenment. It extolled the expression of feelings and the search for personal freedom. It spread throughout Europe, with different manifestations depending on the country. In painting, Romanticism reached its peak in France between 1820 and 1850, replacing Neoclassicism. It main purpose was to oppose the strictures of academic painting, departing from the Classicist tradition grounded in a set of strict rules. Instead it advocated a more subjective and original style of painting. Its main formal features are the use of marked contrasts of light, the preponderance of colour over drawing and the use of impetuous and spontaneous brushwork to increase the dramatic effect. Its greatest exponents were: Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) in Germany; John Constable (1776-1837) and J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) in the UK; and Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) and Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) in France.

, it entered into decline until it gradually lost all traction with the advent of the early avant-gardes in the twentieth century.

and modernism, with the goal of enhancing the everyday through a process of formal refinement.

This preparatory drawing for Pescadores de Bermeo [Bermeo Fishermen] is a study for one of the crowning works from his final period, spent in exile (1936-1940). There are variations of colour between the two works, and the final canvas contains some scenes that are not in this study. This was not uncommon in Arteta, who liked to make several preparatory studies and a myriad of sketches from different perspectives in order to find the most satisfactory composition.

This work is an excellent example of his late period. Here one can readily discern the he had assimilated during his time in Italy, as well as the lessons learned from —mostly from Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1882-1969)—especially in the formal refinement, the detailed study of proportions and the architectural composition. All those aspects are visible not only in the figures, but also in the landscape in the background, a mere compositional recourse to suggest depth, rendered through imprecise areas of colour and plays of volume. In turn, one can discern the influence of Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), particularly in the allegorical tone of the representation, removed from the habitual sense of drama in this kind of subject matter, here replaced instead by a harmonious and almost lyrical approach.

The painting depicts a scene of Basque fishermen and women. Although it is a recurrent subject matter in his work, one can note an important aesthetic and morphological change in this specific period. Here, the former bulk and weight of his characters has given way to lighter figures rendered in simple planes. The seductive women of before are now stereotyped village women, whose sculpture-like appearance is presented with a more stylised and supple effect. In contrast, the profile of the male figure is slightly turned, as in Egyptian representations, reinforcing the angular contour given to his shoulders which adds width to his body.

Unlike his previous output, here Arteta does not seek to individualise his characters, but rather to capture a timeless quality. In fact, this depersonalisation became a signature feature of his years in exile, almost like a romantic-utopian symbol of nostalgia for his homeland and previous life, and a way of depicting the fear of losing one’s identity that comes with war.

Although this preparatory study is not dated, if we take into account that the year of the final painting is 1940, we could infer that it was probably executed in the period between 1937 and 1940. Not only because its style corresponds to its final period, but also because many of the studies he made for the paintings with Basque themes he would execute during his exile in Mexico—including Pescadores de Bermeo—were conceived in Biarritz, where Arteta stayed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.