Picasso tended to paint those things that surrounded him, and in the early spring of 1940, he painted several fish still lives while he was staying in the fishing port of Royan. The ostensible subject of the painting is a fishmonger's slab with a crab, and a pair of scales containing two or three soles. In spite of their predicament these sea creatures look very much still alive. It is not very easy to read the painting because Picasso has treated the composition in terms of a flat pattern of overlapping and interlocking transparent planes. This, the thin delicately brushed paint, and the cool, undemonstrative colours give the painting the appearance of an underwater world of slow-moving calm and harmony But this is disturbed by what seems to be an impending battle between the fish, baring their teeth, and the crab, with its open claws. Those sharp, pointed forms are echoed by the scales. Even the chain going round one of the fish takes on a more sinister aspect. There is an undercurrent of menace and barely suppressed violence that gives the picture a symbolic edge.