Picasso painted this work in Céret, a small town in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, where he worked alongside Georges Braque (1882-1963). Their joint development of the painterly style called Cubism has become the stuff of legend.
Made during the most abstract phase of Cubism, known as "high" or Analytic Cubism (1910-12), this work-which depicts a round tabletop with a stemmed glass at left, the bottle of rum at center, and a pipe in the right foreground-is among the first of Picasso's pictures to include letters. These may refer to the town, Céret, or, alternatively, to the title of a poster or newspaper.