Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
View source →The Absinthe Drinker
Pablo Picasso, 1901
Technical Details
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
73 × 54 cm (28.7 × 21.3 in)
Style
Post-Impressionism / Painting
Decade
1900s
About This Work
A woman sits alone at a café table, hunched over a glass of absinthe, her posture expressing complete withdrawal from the world around her. The figure's blue-tinged skin and the cold, empty café setting create an atmosphere of profound isolation and addiction. The work shows the direct influence of Toulouse-Lautrec's café scenes while already demonstrating Picasso's distinctive emotional intensity.
The Absinthe Drinker is one of the earliest works of the Blue Period and one of the first paintings in which Picasso's characteristic emotional register — melancholic, compassionate, and unflinching — is fully established. The Hermitage acquired this work from the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin.
Current Location
Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
$30–50 million (est.)
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
No public auction record — held in permanent museum collection
Keywords
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Picasso: A Biography by John Richardson
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The Cubist Epoch by Douglas Cooper
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Blue Period Collection Prints
Set of prints featuring Picasso's melancholic Blue Period works
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