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background...” (Hilton 22).

Hilton pointed out that in the painting Picasso made himself look older and as if he had suffered much more. He related this activity by Picasso to that of artists who circulated self-portraits or mutual portraits among Van Gogh's and Gauguin's friends at the end of the 1880's inscribed "a son copain."

Hilton suggested that “The young Picasso, tactfully but also proudly, announces a half-reverential camaraderie with the artists who had preceded him, who were close to him though not personally known. He never painted Braque, or any other living artists, with serious intent” (Hilton 22).

Francois Gilot related a statement which Picasso made as he was showing her prints from his Vollard Suite of the 1930's “You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and moustache? That's Rembrandt, or maybe it's Balzac, I'm not sure. It's a compromise, I suppose. It doesn't really matter. They're only two of the people who haunt me. Every human being is a whole colony you know” (Picasso qtd. in Gilot 45) .

Picasso was also quoted by Gilot as saying “Every painter takes himself for Rembrandt...Everybody has the same delusions” (Picasso qtd. in Gilot 45).

Picasso's delusions may have been jolted by the critical reviews of his first exhibition in Paris in 1901, accounting for his attempting to conceal the sources for his work after that exhibition. Even though this exhibit was a success in terms of sales, the twenty year old artist was criticized for being an imitator of Steinlen, Lautrec and Van Gogh. Even Gustave Coquiot, a Picasso supporter and organizer of that first exhibition admitted “Arriving in Paris very young, Picasso entered upon his Steinlen period. He painted the street, gardens, houses, the boys and the women of the town. He painted them very quickly; up to as many as ten paintings per day. Soon there were so many that his first exhibition was organized, at Vollard's in June, 1901...He was getting tired of this plagiarism; and from Steinlen he went on to Lautrec...” (Coquiot qtd. in Daix 36).

This negative criticism did not prevent Picasso from continuing to use the

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