Picasso Rose Period (1904-1907)
PIcasso's Rose Period is marked by not only a change in the hues of his pallette, but also a change in his subject matter. After moving back and forth between Barcelona and Paris over the previous few years, he moved into an apartment in Monmartre in the outskirts of Paris. Monmartre was affordable for artists, and apparently, Picasso had little money for things other than his art supplies. According to his girlfriend of the time, Fernande Olivier,
"In the winter, it was so bitter cold that the tea remaining in the cups from the night before was frozen in the morning."The building he had moved into was nicknamed "Le Bateau-Lavoir" (The Laundry Boat) by Max Jacob (1876-1944) a fellow resident and poet. The buiding had become a gathering place for artists of the time, who spent their free time at a cafe called Le Lapin Agile, which was owned by a man named Frede. Frede owned a donkey who apparently painted a canvas with a paint-dipped tail, which was displayed in an Exhibition and passed off as the work of a man named Boronalis. Picasso's most famous painting of the Rose Period is The Faimily of Saltimbanques