Les saltimbanques painting meaning

1905 painting by Pablo Picasso

Family of Saltimbanques (French: Famille de saltimbanques) is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. The work depicts six saltimbanques, a kind of itinerant circus performer, in a desolate landscape. It is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's Rose Period, sometimes called his circus period. The painting is housed in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Background

This painting was created during Picasso's early years as an artist after moving to Paris from Barcelona in 1904. As a young man with little money, Picasso lived in a studio in a dilapidated building known as the Bateau-Lavoir. He was fortunate to be surrounded by the many young artists who lived in the building and local area, but for Picasso, this was a period of loneliness and poverty. His sympathy for lonely, poor and isolated people is most evident in the melancholy paintings of his Blue Period, whic Family of saltimbanques 1905 picasso biography list!