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Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910) French painter who is considered the archetype of the modern naive artist. He is known for his richly coloured and meticulously detailed pictures of lush jungles, wild beasts, and exotic figures. After exhibiting with the Fauves in 1905, he gained the admiration of avant-garde artists.
Rousseau was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, in 1844 into the family of a tinsmith. He was a mediocre student, and he left the secondary school in Laval without having completed his studies. He soon entered military service, in which he remained for four years.
During his term of service he met soldiers who had survived the French expedition to Mexico (1862–65) in support of Emperor Maximilian, and he listened with fascination to their recollections. Their descriptions of the subtropical country were doubtless the first inspiration for the exotic landscapes that later became one of his major themes. The vividness of Rousseau’s portrayals of jungle scenes led to the popular conception, which Rousseau never refuted, that he traveled to Mexico. In fact, he never left France.
Released from military service upon the death of his father (to support his widowed mother), Rousseau settled in 1868 in Paris. In 1868, he married Clémence Boitard, his landlord’s 15-year-old daughter, with whom he had six children (only one survived). In 1871, he was appointed as a collector of the octroi of Paris, collecting taxes on goods entering Paris. His wife died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898.
In Paris he began a career as a petty official, eventually (in 1871) becoming a tax collector in the Paris toll office; from this post came the name by which he was well known in later years, le Douanier (“the Customs Officer”), in spite of the fact that the toll office had no real customs functions.
Working as a bureaucrat and busy with family affairs, he still somehow found time to draw and paint. The picture with which Rousseau made his debut at the Salon des Indépendants, Carnival Evening (1886), was a masterpiece of its kind and an impressive beginning for the artist. From 1886, he exhibited regularly in the Salon des Indépendants, and, although his work was not placed prominently, it drew an increasing following over the years.
His wife, who had been ill for some time, died in 1888, and within several years he lost all of his family except for a daughter, whom he sent to live with relatives. This period of personal hardship was also a period of increased artistic activity for Rousseau. An important event in his life at this time was the Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1889; it is probable that the reconstructions of Senegalese, Tonkinese, and Tahitian landscapes at the exposition provided further inspiration for the exoticism of his later paintings. The most important work of this period in Rousseau’s career is his self-portrait, Myself: Portrait-Landscape (1890). Standing in the foreground, palette in hand, Rousseau is surrounded by the Parisian landscape, which is painted with great accuracy. This was obviously intended as a “portrait of the artist” in the academic tradition; the seriousness of purpose is impressive in spite of the naiveté of execution.
Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) was exhibited in 1891, and Rousseau received his first serious review when the young artist Félix Vallotton wrote: “His tiger surprising its prey ought not to be missed; it’s the alpha and omega of painting.” Yet it was more than a decade before Rousseau returned to depicting his vision of jungles.
In 1893 Rousseau retired from the toll house to devote himself entirely to painting and moved to a studio in Montparnasse where he lived and worked until his death in 1910. Soon afterward he met Alfred Jarry, a brilliant young writer, also from Laval, whose nonconformity shocked his contemporaries. Jarry was struck by Rousseau’s unusual work and introduced the self-taught artist to the circle of intellectuals associated with the avant-garde review Le Mercure de France. It was this review that first published an article praising Rousseau. The article was written in connection with his painting The War (1894), exhibited at the 1894 Salon des Indépendants, which demonstrated a striking use of allegory, convincing some viewers that Rousseau was much more than a minor landscapist. This work marked the beginning of the recognition of Rousseau as a serious painter.
His most important painting of this period was The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), in which he portrayed a woman asleep in a moonlit desert with a huge lion standing over her, seemingly transfixed. In 1905 Rousseau was invited to the Salon d’Automne (a semiofficial exhibition created after a schism among the academicians), where his painting The Hungry Lion (1905) was hung in the same room as the works of the group of avant-garde painters known as the Fauves (“Wild Beasts”)—Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck. At last the critics began to speak of Rousseau in a positive light. Ambroise Vollard, the most important dealer in modern paintings in Paris, bought pictures from him. In what is now seen as the first showing of The Fauves. Rousseau’s painting may even have influenced the naming of the Fauves.
In 1907, he was commissioned by artist Robert Delaunay’s mother, Berthe, Comtesse de Delaunay, to paint The Snake Charmer.
During his last years Rousseau painted chiefly exotic landscapes, of which The Hungry Lion was the first major example. The paintings are characterized by a profusion of exotic plant growth painted with great attention to detail. The many different leaf forms that Rousseau depicted were probably based on plants that he studied at the botanical garden in Paris. He rendered each leaf separately yet with an eye toward overall design; each branch of leaves constitutes an almost abstract pattern. In the midst of this vegetal density, colourful birds flit about and mysterious animals stare out at the viewer. There is usually some dramatic incident taking place in the centre, such as a lion attacking its prey, which is in keeping with Rousseau’s continued predilection toward the grandiose, historical, dramatic narratives of traditional academic painting.
Shortly before his death, Rousseau painted the most ambitious of these jungle paintings, The Dream (1910; also called Yadivigha’s Dream), which was also one of his greatest works. Exhibited in March 1910, at the Salon des Independants. In this impressive fantasy, an enchanting nude rests on a red plush Victorian sofa in the middle of a dense jungle. Huge flowers wave about her head, two lions and an elephant peer out of the undergrowth, and a musician plays a flute behind her. Rousseau’s explanation of this scene is that the woman, having fallen asleep on the sofa, dreams that she is transported to this improbable region. This painting, which exhibits all of Rousseau’s descriptive and expressive skill, is a supreme revelation of his powerful and uncommon imagination.
In the same month Rousseau suffered a phlegmon in his leg, one which he ignored. In August, when he was admitted to the Necker Hospital in Paris where his son had died, he was found to have gangrene in his leg. After an operation, he died from a blood clot on 2 September 1910.
Rousseau’s work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Max Beckmann, and the Surrealists.
Since 1998 the record price for a Rousseau painting at auction is $2,882,500 USD for Heureux quator, sold at Christie’s New York in 2009.
Read moreShowing 1–100 of 135 results
Surprised
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949The Sleeping Gypsy
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,099The Dream (Le Rêve)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,669Two lions on the lookout in the jungle
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,239The Snake Charmer
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,099The-Ship-in-the-Tempest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999Myself, Landscape Portrait
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,169Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of Peace
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949The Equatorial Jungle
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹18,669Exotic Landscape
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,379Monkeys and Parrot in the Virgin Forest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519The Merry Jesters
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,169Fight-between-a-Tiger-and-a-Buffalo,-1908
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,339In a Tropical Forest-Struggle between Tiger and Bull
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519Tropical Forest with Apes and Snake
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,439Horse Attacked by a Jaguar
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,659Exotic Landscape
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949The Waterfall
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,379Scouts Attacked by a Tiger
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,599Apes in the Orange Grove
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,319Exotic Landscape with Lion and Lioness
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,099Virgin forest at sunset
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,239The Repast of the Lion
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,809Hungry Lion Attacking an Antelope
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,099Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Woman with an Umbrella in an Exotic Forest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739La guerre
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹23,599The Flamingos
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,769A Centennial of Independence
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,239Seine and Eiffel-tower in the sunset
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,599Old-Junier’s-Cart-(1908)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,599The Painter and His Wife
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999The Eiffel Tower
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,669Un matin de pluie
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,209Scene in Bagneux on the Outskirts of Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,239The Banks of the Oise
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,019Landscape with Cattle
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,379Meadowland (The Pasture)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999Le canal
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,439La Seine a Suresnes
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519View of Bievre sur Gentilly
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739View of the Sevres Bridge and the Clamart Hills, Saint Cloud and Bellevue
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949The-Fishermen-and-the-Biplane
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519Quai d’Ivry
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999Charenton-le-Pont
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Vue des fortifications
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Banana Harvest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Landscape and Four Young Girls
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739A Carnival Evening
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,379The Football Players
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Unpleasant Surprise (Mauvaise surprise)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,879Eve and the Serpent
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,599A Corner of the Plateau of Bellevue
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Forest Promenade
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,309Study for View of the Pont de Sèvres
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹18,879The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519Forest Rendezvous
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Avenue de l’Observatoire
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,239The Quarry
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999Footbridge at Passy
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,219A Suburb (Banlieue)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,599Banks of the Marne
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,879House on the Outskirts of Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,019Ile Saint Louis and Notre Dame de Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,309Liberty Inviting Artists
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,879The Avenue in the Park at Saint Cloud
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Landscape with Factory
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Luxembourg Gardens Monument to Chopin
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739View of Ile Saint-Louis, Near Port Saint-Nicolas, Evening
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Outskirts of Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519The Artillerymen
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Landscape with Farmer
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,669The Customs House
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949Landscape
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,519The Banks of the Oise
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519The Mill at Alfort
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739The Chair Factory
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,439The Ile de la Cite
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹22,739The Mill
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹23,599Landscape With Milkmaids (View of Brittany)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,379Summer
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,879Landscape and Four Fisherman
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519The Tiger Hunt
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739View of Malakoff
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999View of the Banks of the Oise
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739View of Parc de Montsouris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,809View of Saint Cloud
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,809View from the Left of (La) Gare d’Austerlitz
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,169Outskirts-of-Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Park-with-passers-by
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,519View of Montsouris Park, the Kiosk
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,739Outskirts of Paris (Environs de Paris)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999The Laundry Boat of Pont de Charenton
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,999Pastoral landscape with stream, fisherman and stroller
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,219The-courtyard (La Rue)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹21,319A Village Street
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹19,949L’amour des oiseaux
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,809View of the Fortifications to the left of the Gate of Vanves
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,219Vue des environs de Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,169Winter (L’Hiver)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at ₹20,879