Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.
Paintings by Henri Rousseau
Tiger in a Tropical Storm (1891)
Tiger in a Tropical Storm or Surprised! is an 1891 oil-on-canvas painting by Henri Rousseau. It was the first of the jungle paintings for which the artist is chiefly known. It shows a tiger, illuminated by a flash of lightning, preparing to pounce on its prey in the midst of a raging gale.
Unable to have a painting accepted by the jury of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, or the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Rousseau exhibited Tiger in a Tropical Storm in 1891 under the title Surpris!, at the Salon des Indépendants, which was unjuried and open to all artists. The painting received mixed reviews. Rousseau had been a late developer: his first known work, Landscape with a Windmill, was not produced until he was 35, and his work is marked by a naïveté of composition that belies its technical complexity. Most critics mocked Rousseau's work as childish, but Félix Vallotton, a young Swiss painter who was later to be an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut, said of it:
The Dream (Rousseau) (1910)
The Dream (French: Le Rêve; occasionally also known as Le Songe or Rêve exotique) is a large oil-on-canvas painting created by Henri Rousseau in 1910, one of more than 25 Rousseau paintings with a jungle theme. His last completed work, it was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 18 March to 1 May 1910, a few months before his death on 2 September 1910. Rousseau's earlier works had received a negative reception, but poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire remarked on its debut: "The picture radiates beauty, that is indisputable. I believe nobody will laugh this year."
The Dream is the largest of the jungle paintings, measuring 6' 8½" × 9' 9½" (204.5 × 298.5 cm). It features an almost surreal portrait of Yadwigha (Jadwiga), Rousseau's Polish mistress from his youth, lying naked on a divan to the left of the painting, gazing over a landscape of lush jungle foliage, including lotus flowers, and animals including birds, monkeys, an elephant, a lion and lioness, and a snake. The stylised forms of the jungle plants are based on Rousseau's observations at the Paris Museum of Natural History and its Jardin des Plantes. The nude's left arm reaches towards the lions and a black snake charmer who faces the viewer playing his flute, barely visible in the gloom of the jungle under the dim light of the full moon. A pink-bellied snake slithers through the undergrowth, its sinuous form reflecting the curves of the woman's hips and leg.
The Snake Charmer (Rousseau) (1907)
The Snake Charmer (French: La Charmeuse de Serpents) is a 1907 oil-on-canvas painting by French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910). It is a depiction of a woman with glowing eyes playing a flute in the moonlight by the edge of a dark jungle with a snake extending toward her from a nearby tree, two near her legs, and one wrapped around her shoulders.
The Snake Charmer was commissioned by Berthe, Comtesse de Delaunay, the mother of artist Robert Delaunay. It was Rousseau's first large commission and was exhibited in the 1907 Autumn Salon. Because Rousseau never traveled outside of France, the exotic plants in the painting resulted from Rousseau's visits to the Jardin des plantes and from magazines. From 1922 to 1936, The Snake Charmer was in the collection of Jacques Doucet. It was promised to the Louvre in 1925 and became part of its collection in 1937.
The Sleeping Gypsy (1897)
The Sleeping Gypsy (French: La Bohémienne endormie) is an 1897 oil on canvas painting by the French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910). It is a fantastical depiction of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, to which it was donated by Olga Guggenheim in 1939. In the museum, the painting is housed next to Vincent van Gogh's famous 1889 painting The Starry Night.
Rousseau described his painting as follows: "A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic. The scene is set in a completely arid desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental costume."
Myself, Portrait-Landscape (1890)
Myself, Portrait-Landscape (French: Moi-même, portrait-paysage) is an oil on canvas self-portrait by Henri Rousseau, from 1890. It is held in the National Gallery Prague. It was chosen as one of the 105 decisive western paintings for Michel Butor's imaginary museum.
Painted at the start of his career and exhibited at the 1890 salon des Indépendants, Rousseau chose its title to claim a neutral status for it between the usually totally distinct genres of portrait painting and landscape painting. It also shows him wearing as a buttonhole the insignia of the Ordre des Palmes académiques, which was awarded to a namesake of his but never to him, while his two wives' first names are on the palette (replacing an earlier idea of the inscription "To not forget" ("Pour ne pas les oublier"). As well as his private life, the idealised urban background shows elements of contemporary life - the now lost metallic Pont du Carrousel, the shadow of a hot-air balloon and the new Eiffel Tower. - and (at top left) a red sun behind a cloud inspired by Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1884 Les deux majestés.
Boy on the Rocks (1897)
Boy On The Rocks (French: Garçon sur les rochers) is a painting by French artist Henri Rousseau. It is an oil on canvas and was created sometime between 1895 and 1897. The painting was purchased by art collector Chester Dale in 1927 and was subsequently bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
Rousseau's work has been described as having a "mysterious poetry" and a "dreamlike force".
The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (1905)
The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (Le lion ayant faim se jette sur l'antilope) is a large oil-on-canvas painting created by Henri Rousseau in 1905. Following Scouts Attacked by a Tiger the previous year, The Hungry Lion was the second jungle painting to mark Rousseau's return to this genre after a 10-year hiatus caused by the generally negative reception to his 1891 painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm.
The Hungry Lion features a jungle scene of thick green foliage lit by a deep red setting sun. In the foreground, a lion bites deeply into the neck of an antelope. Other animals are visible in the dense undergrowth: a panther watches from the right, an owl stares out of the background holding a bloody strand of meat in its beak in the centre, with a second bird to its left, and dark ape-like shape with gimlet eye lurks to the left. Rousseau based the central pair of animals on a diorama of stuffed animals at the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, entitled Senegal Lion Devouring an Antelope.
The Muse Inspiring the Poet (1909)
The Muse Inspiring the Poet is a 1909 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Henri Rousseau, forming a double portrait of Marie Laurencin and Guillaume Apollinaire. Owned for a time by Paul Rosenberg, it is now in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Another version of the work is now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
In 2021, the heirs of Charlotte von Wesdehlen, the widow of the Jewish art collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, requested that the Kunstmuseum Basel restitute the work. The museum purchased it in 1940 through the Swiss art dealer Christoph Bernoulli, Basel.
Portrait of Mr. X (Pierre Loti) (1906)
Portrait of Mr. X (Pierre Loti) is a painting by the French artist Henri Rousseau. Rendered in simplified forms, it depicts a half-length figure of a man with a cat set against a landscape background. Painted in oil on canvas, the work is 61 cm high and 50 cm wide. It is part of the collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich.
The identity of the man portrayed has not been definitively established. Some authors have suggested that the figure represents the writer Pierre Loti. There is also disagreement regarding the dating of the painting; more recent assessments propose 1906 as the year of its creation. The portrait was a model for various other paintings.
The Repast of the Lion (1907)
The Repast of the Lion is an early 20th century painting by French Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau. Done in oil on canvas, the work depicts a feeding lion in a jungle setting. The painting expands upon some of Rousseau's late 19th century work, and the foliage depicted in the painting was inspired by the artist's studying of Paris' botanical gardens. The work is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre (1908)
The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre is an oil-on-canvas painting executed c. 1908–09 by French artist Henri Rousseau. It depicts the working-class community of Bicêtre on the outskirts of southern Paris. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
A Centennial of Independence (1892)
Avec ce tableau, Henri Rousseau commémore le centenaire de la Première République française de 1792]