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Notes:
Provenance:
George Stern Fine Arts, Encino, California
Private Collection, Los Angeles, California

Literature:
Deborah Epstein Solon, 'An American Impressionist, The Art and Life of Alson Skinner Clark', Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, California, 2005, illus. p. 31, fig. 8
Jean Stern, 'Alson S. Clark', Petersen Publishing Co., Los Angeles, California, 1983, p. 97
Ruth Lilly Westphal, 'Plein Air Painters of California, The Southland', Westphal Publishing, Irvine, California p. 54

Exhibition:
The Irvine Museum, Irvine, California, May 23-September 3, 1994.

Note:
According to Jean Stern's records about the painting, "'The Bridge Builders' was Clark's first American success with a Parisian subject. It was debuted in 1906 as part of a huge show of 57 of his works at the Art Institute of Chicago. This in itself was a remarkable sign of artistic acceptance in a major American museum. His exhibition included paintings from France, Italy and England. 'The Bridge Builders' was singled out by reviewers and art critics as the star of the show."

Deborah Solon writes about 'The Bridge Builders' in her catalogue on page 29 as follows: Returning to Paris in the fall 1903, Clark resumed painting the city. The Bridge Builders explores the theme of construction (seen the previous year in 'From Our Window, Paris') and continues Clark's trend toward a brighter palette and more brilliant light. The subject is a specific moment in the construction of a bridge spanning the Seine, down to the detail of a worker on a ladder who is literally frozen in time. Wood scaffolding, docks for loading and unloading of material, workers carefully negotiating the scaffolding - all combine to create a moment from fairly pedestrian activity. Such works prefigure Clark's iconic images of the building of the Panama Canal. A large, exhibition-size work, 'The Bridge Builders' was shown at several venues, including the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (1904) in Portland, Oregon, and the Society of American Artists (1905) in New York City. Correspondence [with Amelia Baker in March, 1904] substantiates that Clark was intentionally working on a larger scale: "I am busy as possible now with my stuff. I am doing some of my street scenes on a larger scale, and getting on very well with it. I think these are the first serious efforts I have made to do that [and] I hope to improve a lot".

The entry in Ruth Westphal's book 'Plein Air Paintings The Southland' includes the following paragraph: "Among the many visitors and purchasers at [a show in 1904] was his former teacher, William Merritt Chase. The master paid his pupil the highest compliment possible - the purchase, for his own collection, of Clark's painting 'The Bridge Builders'.

There is a fragment of an old paper label on the reverse inscribed Paris, and another with the remnants of an additional unidentified paper label. Both appear to date from the time this work was executed.