[1] In choosing austere color and sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes, beggars and drunks—Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas, who took his own life at the L'Hippodrome Café in Paris, France on February 17, 1901.
[3] The works Picasso painted for his show at Ambroise Vollard's gallery that summer were generally characterized by a "dazzling palette and exuberant subject matter".
However, as he moved towards subject matter such as society's poor and outcast, and accented this with a cool, anguished mood with blue hues, the critics and the public turned away from his works.
[4] Picasso continued his output, but his financial situation suffered:His pictures, not merely melancholy but profoundly depressed and cheerless, inspired no affection in the public or in buyers.
Picasso's bout with depression gradually ended, and as his psychological state improved, he moved towards more joyful, vibrant works, and emphasized the use of pinks ("rose" in French) and other warm hues to express the shift in mood and subject matter.
The painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), one of the final works from this period, was stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) on December 20, 2007, but retrieved on January 8, 2008.