Family of Saltimbanques

A troupe of circus performers - harlequins, acrobats, a stout jester, a girl - stand together yet strangely disconnected in a barren, featureless landscape, each lost in private reverie. Picasso painted this large canvas at the close of his Rose Period, when warmer pinks and the wistful world of saltimbanques replaced the Blue Period's gloom. Now in Washington's National Gallery, the Family of Saltimbanques is the summit of those years - a melancholy meditation on the wandering, marginal life of entertainers, and perhaps on the artist's own circle, beautiful and rootless on the edge of society.