Picasso, Study for Peasants

Picasso painted this in 1906 while staying in the small Spanish village of Gósol, a work from the pivotal moment when his art was shifting from the Blue Period toward Cubism.

The man above is a father, the woman below his daughter. Both faces still carry the blue tint of the Blue Period, but the father's trousers, painted in an earthy brown, mark a new direction. The line work has a loose, spontaneous quality, almost dashed off, and the wrinkles in the father's shirt and the floral wreath above look casually sketched, yet they bring the whole scene to life.

This study led directly to the finished painting, Peasants, which differs from the study only in adding two cows to the previously empty space on the left. That finished work now hangs at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.