The Old Guitarist
1904 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
The guitar is the only warm note in the picture. Picasso painted it in his Blue Period, poor himself and living on very little.
★ 7.8
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Woman Ironing
1904 · Guggenheim, New York City
The laundress bears down on her iron with her shoulders up and her head sunk, all in the cold blue of Picasso's poorest years.
★ 6.3
Mother and Child
1902 · Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
A mother holding her child, in the blue Picasso used for everything during the years he was poor in Paris and Barcelona.
★ 5.6
Woman with Folded Arms (Femme aux Bras Croises)
1902 · Private collection
Her crossed arms are a wall against the world, and the blue does the rest. Picasso was painting the outcast and the destitute.
★ 5.6
Child with a Dove
1901 · Private collection
A child holding a white dove with a colored ball at its feet, painted just as Picasso's palette was cooling toward blue.
★ 5.2
Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto
1903 · Private collection
They shared a Barcelona studio, and Soto was known as a hard drinker, but Picasso painted him sober and sad in blue.
★ 5.2