The painting, which can be seen in one of the halls of the Hermitage, was painted during the artist's "Blue Period." It was a difficult time for Picasso. In 1901 his close friend, the poet and art-history student Carlos Casagemas, shot himself in Paris because of unrequited love. Picasso was devastated. After his friend's death he began to paint in lifeless blue tones, which is why art historians would call this period of the artist's work the "Blue Period." But beyond the palette, the subjects of the paintings themselves changed. They now depicted sorrow, death, joyless old age, poverty and hopelessness. It was during this period that Pablo Picasso painted his "The Absinthe Drinker".
To some extent this is an inward portrait of Picasso himself at that time. He was oppressed by poverty, a lack of commissions, the death of his best friend, reclusiveness, loneliness, emptiness and the general disarray of his life. At the same time, in the painting's style one can notice the influence of contemporary artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. The theme of a lonely person cast to the margins of life and seeking oblivion in a drink was quite popular at the end of the 19th century. But despite the popularity of this motif among other artists, it is in Picasso's execution that the scene acquires the full measure of tragedy and deep inner drama.
The heroine is completely absorbed in herself, the edges of the painting seem to confine her within narrow bounds, and the Absinthe Drinker clasps herself with unnaturally intertwined arms, as if shrinking, wanting to take up as little space as possible. This feeling of self-exclusion from the life around her, evoked by the painting's figure, only further emphasizes the sense of rejection and loneliness amid the crowd. And the interior in which the lady sits, with its dirty-red walls so typical of the many Montmartre cafés, looks lifeless and oppressive.
When the painting was executed the artist was so poor that he had no spare canvases, so "The Absinthe Drinker" was painted on the reverse side of another work that the artist had previously painted over.
