Pablo Picasso Portrait of a Man

Annessa Chan:

An anonymous young man with dark hair and a beard sits by himself in what seems to be a café or bar. The bleak lighting casts a shadow on the stark wall, which is decorated with only a single, sombre landscape painting.

Picasso made this portrait during his Blue Period, a time when he was mourning the suicide of his close friend Carles Casagemas. Casagemas had accompanied Picasso to Paris in 1900, but took his own life a year later, after his failed attempt at murdering a woman who rejected him. You can feel Picasso’s pain in the dark blue tones of his work from this time, when he often depicted socially marginalised people.

Picasso settled in France in 1904. When he was based in Barcelona, he focused on representing the most marginal figures, such as beggars, vagabonds, and women in prison. This is what art historians would later call his Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904.

What is it about this painting that makes the subject seem so isolated and melancholy? In creating this painting, Picasso may have also been reflecting on his own experience as an outsider, someone who exists beyond social norms and works against the mainstream.

NARRATOR:

Titled Portrait of a Man, this oil painting was created by Pablo Picasso between 1902 and 1903. Its measures ninety-three centimetres in height and seventy-eight centimetres in width.

The work features a man seated in a gloomy, greyish-blue interior. He has a sallow complexion and sunken eyes that stare vacantly into the distance. He has dark, curly, short hair and an exposed forehead. Sideburns run down the sides of his cheeks, joining a full beard that covers his chin and jawline. He has a straight, prominent nose on a long, narrow face. He wears a chunky, greyish-blue blazer, which is buttoned up, with a blue-tinged white shirt collar peeking out above the lapels. The man sits with his arms crossed, which creates wrinkles on his jacket near the underarms.

At the bottom of the canvas is a streak of unevenly applied brown paint about the width of an adult’s palm, suggesting a wooden table. The wall is also greyish blue, with the upper half in a lighter shade than the lower half, divided by the slope of the man’s shoulders. The colour difference makes it look like the man is sitting on a deep blue couch against a wall of lighter tone. He casts a faded shadow on the right side of the wall. Near the top left corner hangs a landscape painting that features trees, hills, and fences in dark outlines and a similarly blue-and-grey palette.

You can see Picasso’s signature in the top right corner of the canvas.