The Blue Room

The Blue Room is a 1901 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he painted during his Blue Period. It depicts a scene of a nude woman bending over in a bath tub. A hidden painting was revealed beneath the surface by x-ray images and infra-red scans, showing a portrait of a bearded man. The painting has been housed in The Phillips Collection, in Washington D.C. since 1927. Background The Blue Room is considered to be one of the earliest examples of a work from Picasso's Blue Period. This was an important period in his life, when he moved to Paris from Barcelona and showed his paintings at his first solo exhibition at the Vollard Gallery in 1901. Picasso's Blue Period is defined by the artist's preoccupation with images of human suffering, a subject matter that he conveyed in shades of blue. This was a period of great emotional turmoil for the young artist. Throughout these early years, beginning in 1901, when Picasso was just 19 years old, he lived in poverty in Paris as a struggling artist. He also experienced the loss of his close friend, the Spanish poet Carles Casagemas, who committed suicide by shooting himself in the head at a dinner party. Picasso felt the loss of his friend deeply and this tragic event is considered to have been a major influence on his artwork which became dominated by sombre blue and green hues. Picasso said to his friend Pierre Daix, "It was thinking about Casagemas that got me started painting in blue". During his Blue Period, Picasso favoured creating portraits of the poor, lonely and suffering, such as prostitutes, destitute people and intoxicated people from the street, and his paintings were designed to convey the hardship endured by the subject. This period of pessimism would later be replaced by a more positive era known as his Rose Period. Description The Blue Room depicts a scene of a nude woman in the process of bathing. The painting's title reflects the predominant use of blue shades throughout the painting.