The Frugal Meal, from The Saltimbanques

Pablo Picasso’s remarkable career spanned more than seven decades and influenced nearly every major artistic trend in the first half of the twentieth century. This large, haunting etching, The Frugal Meal, was one of the last works of his Blue Period (1901–4), a time when the struggling artist’s palette was dominated by the color blue, then symbolically associated with melancholy—the mood in which he portrayed his array of poor, ill, and outcast characters. Completed just after Picasso settled permanently in France, moving into a dilapidated Montmartre tenement nicknamed the Bateau-Lavoir, or “Washerwoman’s Boat,” this austere etching brings together two subjects that fascinated him—couples in cafés and the experience of the blind—with a high degree of refinement. The man’s emaciated face is in profile, while the woman stares directly at the viewer, emphasizing her companion’s blindness. The angular bodies and elongated fingers of the two figures reflect the scarcity of both their meal and their means. The Frugal Meal, which was only Picasso’s second attempt at printmaking, reveals the artist’s extraordinary gift for draftsmanship and his remarkable facility with new media and techniques.