Pablo Picasso Ruiz’s art from 1904 to 1905 is classified under the title, The Rose Period. Misleadingly, the colors in the rose period are not exclusively rose or light pink in color, but also include greens, blues, and reds. This brief period of increased color comes after a time when Picasso depicts his subjects with a lack of coloration, mainly in monochrome blue which gave it the name “The Blue Period”. Although the colors of the rose period were brighter and more cheerful, there was much less emotion in the works, due to Picasso’s subject matter.
Picasso chooses the travelling circus as a subject, and he delves into their world of cheer and oddity. Throughout the blue and rose periods Picasso is never stationary, moving to countries in direct proportion to his studios. The nomadic life of circus performers and also their position in society fascinated Picasso. As entertainers they must always put on a show, but beneath their acts are real people unknown to anyone but to themselves and those close to them. If they do not entertain, they are not paid, as are artists. Many of the rose period paintings depict circus performers and Saltimbanques, or travelling acrobats, in placid scenes, each of them distant from each other. For example, In Two Acrobats and a Dog (1905), he represent’s two young acrobats before an undefined, barren landscape. Although the acrobats are physically close, they gaze in different directions and do not interact, and the reason for their presence is not made clear. Differences in the acrobats' height also exaggerate their disconnection from each other and from the empty landscape.
In one of the rose period’s best known works, The Saltimbanques Family, (1905) each character in the painting is isolated from the others, again symbolizing the loneliness and independence Picasso saw and identified in the performers. The harlequin holding the little girl’s hand (who is Picasso) stares completely