ROUSSEAU

A Corner of the Plateau of Bellevue	Apes in the Orange Grove	Exotic Landscape	Landscape on the Banks of the Bievre at Becetre Spring	Landscape with Farmer	Luxembourg Garden
The Customs House	The Dream	The Fishermen and the Biplane	The Flamingos	The Sleeping Gypsy	View of the Banks of the Oise

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Henri Rousseau

May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910

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Biography

Henri Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner. He is also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer) after his place of employment. Ridiculed during his life, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.

He was born in Laval in the Loire Valley into the family of a tinsmith. He worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army," serving for four years, starting in 1863. With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. With his new job in hand, in 1869 he started a relationship with a cabinetmaker's daughter, Clemence Boitard. In 1871, he was promoted to the toll collector's office in Paris as a tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art. Rousseau claimed he had "no teacher other than nature", although he admitted he had received "some advice" from two established Academic painters, Félix Auguste-Clément and Jean-Léon Gérôme. Essentially he was self-taught and is considered to be a naive or primitive painter.

Rousseau's naive style gave him many critics: people often were shocked by his work or ridiculed it. His ingenuousness was extreme, and he was not aware that establishment artists considered him untutored. He always aspired, in vain, to conventional acceptance. Many observers commented that he painted like a child and did not know what he was doing, but the work shows sophistication in his particular technique.

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. 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 took more than a decade before Rousseau returned to depicting his vision of jungles. In 1905 a large jungle scene The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants near works by younger leading avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse in what is now seen as the first showing of The Fauves. Rousseau's painting may even have influenced the naming of the Fauves.

The Snake Charmer, 1907In 1907 he was commissioned by artist Robert Delaunay's mother, Berthe, Comtesse de Delaunay, to paint The Snake Charmer. When Pablo Picasso happened upon a painting by Rousseau being sold on the street as a canvas to be painted over, the younger artist instantly recognised Rousseau's genius and went to meet him. In 1908 Picasso held a half serious, half burlesque banquet in his studio in Le Bateau-Lavoir in Rousseau's honour.

After Rousseau's retirement in 1893, he supplemented his small pension with part-time jobs and work such as playing a violin in the streets. He also worked briefly at Le Petit Journal, where he produced a number of its lurid covers.

Henri Rousseau died 2 September 1910 in the Hospital Necker in Paris. Seven friends stood at his grave in the Cimetière de Bagneux: the painters Paul Signac and Otiz de Zarate, Robert Delaunay and his wife SoniaTerk, the sculptor Brancusi, Rousseau's landlord Armand Queval and Guillaume Apollinaire who wrote the epitaph Brancusi put on the tombstone:

We salute you
Gentile Rousseau you can hear us
Delaunay his wife Monsieur Queval and myself
Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven
We will bring you brushes paints and canvas
That you may spend your sacred leisure in the light of truth
Painting
As you once did my portrait
Facing the stars

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