The Metropolitan Museum of Art summarises the importance of this painting in relation to his subsequent works about travelling circus performers.

[2]Simple yet haunting, The Actor is the work with which Picasso ended his obsession with the wretched in favor of the theatrical world of acrobats and saltimbanques.

Although the attenuated figure and extraordinary play of hands recall the El Greco-inspired mannerism of the Blue Period, The Actor can be seen as the prologue to the series of works that culminates in the enormous canvas Family of Saltimbanques.First owned by Picasso's friend Frank Burty Haviland [citation needed], it was sold in 1912 to Alice and Paul Friedrich Leffmann, originally of Cologne, Germany.

[5] The Leffmanns sold the painting in June 1938,[4] for $13,200, to art dealers Paul Rosenberg and Hugo Perls, to fund their escape from the Nazis.

[5][1] In 2016, the heir of the Leffmanns sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art in U.S. federal court, seeking the return of the painting on the ground that the Leffmans had sold it under duress.

The museum stated that the rip did not affect the artwork's central subject, and that they intended to have the painting repaired in a few weeks by performing "unobtrusive" work.