Picasso - Child with Dove

"Child with a Dove" is one of Picasso's earliest works: he was twenty-one or even younger, but his own style is already evident. It is considered a prelude to his Blue Period. He probably painted it during his second stay in Paris while staying with Spanish friends.

The reason for this intimate approach to the subject may lie in the subject of this book. Picasso's father, Don Jose Ruiz, had made pigeons a particularly popular subject in his paintings, and as a boy Picasso must have seen pigeons often, as well as his father's paintings. Childhood memories must have played a part in this.

By this time he had seen, studied, and adopted contemporary French painting: he had taken Toulouse-Lautrec's way of quickly rendering a visual impression with a few bold lines and strident touches of color and made it his own. He had also learned from Degas how to look at a figure acutely and from a distance.

The Child with the Dove, 1901

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