
The Thinker
1904 · Musee Rodin, Paris
Rodin first made this figure as Dante brooding over the Gates of Hell, then enlarged him and set him thinking alone on a rock.
★ 9.3

Rodin first made this figure as Dante brooding over the Gates of Hell, then enlarged him and set him thinking alone on a rock.

The guitar is the only warm note in the picture. Picasso painted it in his Blue Period, poor himself and living on very little.

The title comes from Baudelaire and the technique from Seurat, but the color is already heading somewhere neither of them went.

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.