IV.

The Rose Period

In 1904 Picasso settled in Paris, living in a shabby building known as the Bateau-Lavoir (“laundry barge”, which it resembled). He met Fernande Olivier, the first of many companions to influence the theme, style, and mood of his work. The next year or so of his life is known as his Rose Period, when blue was replaced by pink as the predominant colour in his work. His subjects became more cheerful and included many scenes of the circus, which he frequently visited, and circus performers—bohemians outside respectable society—with whom he identified. One such painting of this period is Family of Saltimbanques (1905, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.); in the figure of the harlequin, Picasso represented his alter ego, a practice that he repeated in later works.

In 1909 Picasso moved out of the Bateau-Lavoir into an apartment with a maid. By this time he had attracted influential patrons, such as the American writer Gertrude Stein, whose portrait he painted (1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and had gained the support of the art dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, whom he met in 1907. Kahnweiler introduced Picasso to Georges Braque, another young artist whose work he handled.