A Prodigy's First Paintings

Man with a Cap was painted in 1895, when Picasso was 15. It is also the earliest work on this route. It isn't here because it is famous or because the sitter mattered in Picasso's life. It is here because it shows his early style. Think of a typical Picasso and you probably picture faces that are hard to read, crooked lines or bold geometric shapes. Those come from his adult years. As a boy, he left behind many works like this one, painted in painstaking detail. How his style changed is a story for the later works, so for now, let's look at his childhood.

One of the best-known tales dates from the moment he was born. The newborn Picasso didn't cry, and the midwife told the family that he didn't seem to be breathing. The room fell into a helpless silence. Then Salvador, a doctor and distant relative who had been smoking in a corner, walked over and blew cigarette smoke toward the baby's nose. As everyone stared, the baby coughed, then let out a loud wail. Whether he actually inhaled the smoke is anyone's guess, but he had cleared a major hurdle right from the start.

Picasso's father taught art at a local school, so he grew up interested in painting and surrounded by chances to practice it. His first work, made with his father's encouragement, is The Young Bullfighter, painted in 1889 when he was nine. In 1896, at 15, he painted his first academic-style work, First Communion. The girl at its center is widely believed to be his sister. Picasso was the eldest son and had two younger sisters, and the youngest, Conchita, six years his junior, died of illness at a very young age. Missing her, he is said to have given the girl in the painting his sister's face. In Science and Charity (1897), a doctor and a nun stand on either side of a sick patient's bed, and once again the doctor's face is his father's. The painting later earned high praise at an exhibition in Madrid. That's about all you need to remember of his childhood work.

He went on to enter an art school in Madrid, but had this prodigy received the same education as everyone else, today's Picasso would not exist. Losing interest in his classes, he dropped out and set about carving his own artistic path.