Picasso in His Unknown Years: The Portrait of Gustave Coquiot

The sitter in Portrait of Gustave Coquiot was a critic and writer active in Paris at the time. He wrote, collected art and also served as secretary to Auguste Rodin. In Picasso's circle, he was someone who wrote critiques of his work. Rather than dwell on Coquiot, let's look at Picasso himself when he painted this portrait.

In 1901, Picasso had not fully settled in Paris and was still unknown. As we saw with The Death of Casagemas, he had first visited the city with Casagemas in 1900, then gone back to Spain; the following year Casagemas returned to Paris alone and took his own life. After that, Picasso left for Paris again in May 1901. It still wasn't a permanent move, but he sold paintings and held exhibitions there.

In Spain, he had his father's solid backing and recognition at school. Early 20th-century Paris, though, was a huge wall to climb. The old rules of art, with their pursuit of beauty and objective observation, were crumbling, and artists everywhere were inventing new movements and showing new work. Between 1900 and 1914, Paris alone saw more than 200 cultural magazines launched, each championing a different artistic "ism." Countless movements were born, and just as many vanished. Picasso arrived in the middle of all this as just another young artist.

So from 1901, for the first few years in Paris, he lived in poverty. His father sent some support, but their relationship was strained. Worried about money, he sometimes painted a new picture over an old oil painting, and in winter he reportedly burned bundles of sketches for heat. After Casagemas's death he also suffered from depression for a while, so his early Paris days were far from bright.

Even so, he worked to sell his art, meeting critics like Coquiot, dealers who would sell his work, and a few fellow Spaniards in Paris, and steadily carved out his own path. He would eventually gain fame and enormous wealth, but even he had hard times like these.