Harlequin with a Guitar

In Paris in the early 1920s, painters kept returning to the characters of the old Italian comedy, above all Harlequin in his suit of coloured diamonds. The man in this costume is the Spanish painter Jacinto Salvadó, who worked for Derain and for Picasso. A year before this picture, in 1923, Picasso had painted him in the same role. Derain set him on a strip of sand in 1924, with a band of sea behind and a pale, cloudy sky filling a canvas almost two metres tall. Salvadó grips the guitar as if about to play, yet his raised leg makes him look ready to dance, and his face turns away without expression. The museum points to two spots of hard light, the white collar and the white socks, that make the figure look stranger still. He also posed for Derain's companion canvas, Harlequin and Pierrot.