La Tragédie

Picasso painted this in 1903, back in Barcelona and nearly broke, in the stretch we now call his Blue Period after the near-single colour he used for two years of beggars, drunks and the destitute. Three barefoot figures stand at the edge of a cold sea, a man, a woman and a small boy, each folded into private grief and not quite touching. The blue reads as poverty as much as weather. He could not always afford new supports, and infrared scans have since found other pictures under this one, sketched heads and lettering from years earlier, the wooden panel reused because it was there. The boy reaches a hand toward the two adults, the one small gesture crossing the space between them.