Focus on this artwork and analyze the Background.
After achieving some early success in 1901, Picasso was still a struggling artist by 1905, living in penury in Montmartre. The work was painted at the new studio that he took on the top floor of the dilapidated building at 13 rue Ravignan, which the poet Max Jacob termed "Le Bateau-Lavoir". The Cirque Médrano was situated nearby at the foot of Montmartre, and Picasso was inspired by the harlequins and saltimbanques, clowns, jugglers and other acts, making the transition from his bleak Blue Period to his more optimistic Rose Period.
Young Girl with a Flower Basket was created in the autumn of 1905, after Picasso returned to Paris from spending six weeks painting in the countryside in Holland. The experience of his Dutch trip was also coupled with a renewed Parisian interest in classical art, which had great influence on Picasso's work during that year. The art historian Alfred H. Barr, Jr. remarked on the influence of classicism on Picasso during this period.During the second half of the year [Picasso’s] work began to assume a classic breadth and repose. Such paintings…reveal the new style, more objective in feeling, more studied in pose, broadly and more solidly modeled, simpler in color. Picasso’s youthful classicism is informal, fresh, unacademic... During this brief moment in his youth he was able to hold in delicate, intuitive balance the human and the ideal, the personal and the traditional.Later in 1905, Henri-Pierre Roché introduced Picasso to the collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein and they became friends, buying Femme au bras levé (1905) direct from the artist. Picasso completed Portrait of Gertrude Stein in 1906. The acquisitions by the Steins were to mark the beginnings of Picassos commercial success, and by the end of 1906 his works were being bought by the influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
Bateau-Lavoir classical art saltimbanque Rose Period Le Bateau-Lavoir classicism Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Max Jacob Cirque Médrano Blue Period Montmartre Portrait of Gertrude Stein harlequin Henri-Pierre Roché Ambroise Vollard Gertrude Gertrude Stein Leo Stein