The Pigeons

While working on the "Las Meninas" suite, Picasso interrupted his analysis of Velázquez’s oeuvre to paint nine oils in which he depicted the young pigeons he saw in the pigeon-loft of his workshop in La Californie. The presence of the Mediterranean with its light and colour evokes the pictures he painted in Antibes. The characteristic palm trees and vegetation of the area surrounding La Californie can be found in the composition, as Picasso clearly intended to set his landscape in the Bay of Cannes.
As in the other works in the "Las Meninas" series, Picasso experimented with light, colour and space. All nine works have the same structure: the compartmentalised dovecote to the left, the windowsill with a few pigeon chicks underneath, and the landscape of the Bay of Cannes in the rest of the canvas, save for a hint of the window frame in the upper area and to the right. Similarly, most of the works feature a black pigeon standing on the upper part of the railing. In some canvases the brushstroke and paint feature more prominently. By highlighting the gesture of the paintbrush and the material quality of the oil, the composition is fragmented and the resulting work acquires volume.
On the subject of why the artist chose this theme, we should not forget that it was a motif his father had repeatedly explored and which had also captured Picasso’s attention as a boy, as proven by some of the drawings he had made as a child and which are now in the museum’s collection. These paintings revisit the theme of the window, at once an opening and a frame that creates a dialogue between interior and exterior. These distinctive compositions marked a break in the almost obsessive work he was producing at the time. The two themes, pigeons and landscape, coexist without either prevailing over the other. The window motif also evokes Matisse, who repeatedly used it in his oeuvre. Furthermore, Matisse, who passed away in 1955, had also made Picasso a present of two young doves.