By 1905, Picasso shifted his outlook and began to paint in a new palette of warmer shades, depicting subjects with a more positive undertone.

In this Rose Period, Picasso developed an interest in the life of the saltimbanque, or travelling circus performer, often depicting groups or families of acrobats.

[1] John Richardson and other art historians have considered that the dreamy atmosphere of the painting and the expressionless appearances of the figures were influenced by Picasso's use of opium, a substance that was regularly used by the tenants of the Bateau-Lavoir during this period.

[4] X-radiography has shown the previous versions of the painting, in which Picasso had made several changes to the figures, such as the woman's hat and shoulders, the colour of the child's ballet slippers and the red jester's leg.

[5] Critics have suggested that Family of Saltimbanques is a covert group portrait of Picasso and his social circle, symbolized as poor, independent and isolated.

[7] In his book Picasso and Apollinaire: The Persistence of Memory, Peter Read notes that preparatory drawings for the work revealed that the large jester was actually a representation of El Tio Pepe Don José, the head of a circus troupe.

He continues by opining that the figures in the painting are allegorical and represent Picasso and his social circle facing a new century without a clear path to guide them.

On the right side of the painting is an isolated woman, representing Olivier, who is sitting with one hand on her shoulder and the other in her lap as if holding a missing baby.

Musée d'Orsay describes the painting as a masterpiece and remarks that, "Picasso is less interested in the show, usually excluded from the frame, than in the other aspects of their lives, capturing a medial space between public and private worlds where in the most banal triviality and the most sublime grace converge.

"[10] The painting was originally purchased directly from Picasso in 1908 by the Parisian businessman André Level for the La Peau de l'Ours Collection.

Rilke used the figures in Picasso's painting as a symbol of "human activity ... always travelling and with no fixed abode, they are even a shade more fleeting than the rest of us, whose fleetingness was lamented."

Further, although Picasso's painting depicts the figures in a desolate desert landscape, Rilke described them as standing on a "threadbare carpet" to suggest "the ultimate loneliness and isolation of Man in this incomprehensible world, practicing their profession from childhood to death as playthings of an unknown will...before their 'pure too-little; had passed into 'empty too-much'.