Pablo Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques
A Closer Look at The Artist's Famous Circus Painting
© Meg Nola
Nov 9, 2008
Pablo Picasso’s 1905 painting Family of Saltimbanques features a group of circus performers, standing together yet floating detachedly before a dream-like background. The work represents a bridge between Picasso’s melancholy Blue Period (1901-1904), toward his next Rose Period (1904-1906) phase. While Picasso often included clowns and circus performers in his Rose Period, Family of Saltimbanques still conveys a sense of sadness common to Blue Period paintings. Additionally, the color tones of Family of Saltimbanques remain in the cooler realm of the Blue Period, with only vague notes of the warmer Rose Period palette.
Circus Inspirations
The French word saltimbanque combines the Italian use of saltare, meaning to leap or jump, and banco, meaning the bench or stage surface used by acrobats and circus performers. Picasso’s main influence in his painting was The Cirque Médrano (formerly The Cirque Fernando), which performed in Paris and had its base in Montmartre, close to Picasso’s studio. Picasso found the unusual theatrics and physical energy of the circus to be fascinating, and he further enjoyed the performers’ colorful antics and personalities. He also felt that the circus performers’ keeping together as a family-like unit while being at odds with conventional society mirrored the bohemian lifestyle of artists.
Picasso was not the first painter to be intrigued by circus performers, and The Cirque Médrano in particular had inspired 19th century works by artists Edgar Degas, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Georges Seurat. Picasso’s effort was larger than his usual painting, using a canvas of approximately 83 by 90 inches and representing a kind of creative expansion. Picasso’s reputation was growing at the time, but he had not reached the heights of fame that he would later in life. It seems significant that he chose such a large canvas at this point -- especially when moving from one artistic phase to the next -- and almost shows a kind of circus-inspired daring, like a man walking a tightrope or flying through the air toward a trapeze.
Picasso made several changes and focused intensely on the piece, even including himself in the figure of the harlequin. While the members of Family of Saltimbanques are playing their distinct roles, there is a somberness to their group and an almost shared knowledge that although they may be able to defy reality through their circus life, they still cannot escape it.
Legacy and Location
Before its bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1963, Family of Saltimbanques had a few other owners, including Hertha Koenig, poet and patron of the arts. Hertha was also a friend of the German poet and author Rainer Maria Rilke, who described the work as “the finest Picasso…in which there is so much Paris[.]” Also, author Elaine Scott’s 2008 young adult novel Secrets of The Cirque Medrano was inspired by Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques, weaving a story around the painting and its uniquely vivid time and place.
Family of Saltimbanques can be seen at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Sources
- Family of Saltimbanques -- The National Gallery of Art
- Picasso: The Early Years -- The National Gallery of Art
