Paul, Picasso's first child, was born in February 1921. As with other family portraits, notably that of his wife Olga, Picasso adopts a meticulous representational technique which leaves us in no doubt this is exactly what the child looked like. But he undermines the illusionism of the painting by leaving large areas of the canvas sketchy or unpainted; even Paul's feet, and the ruff round his neck, are only drawn in. This is a deliberately subversive technique. However naturalistic his style on certain occasions, Picasso always held to a central belief of the modern artist: that the work of art is not a copy of reality but an addition to it, an independant entity subject to its own inner laws.
Paul as a Harlequin is one of a seres of canvases in which Picasso portrayed the little boy, often in fancy dress as a pierrot or a bullfighter.
