Henri Rousseau
Rousseau
in 1907
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Rousseau in
1907;
photo by
Dornac
Born Henri Julien Félix Rousseau
21 May 1844
Laval,
France
Died 2 September 1910 (aged 66)
Paris,
France
Nationality French
Education Self-taught
Known for Painting
Notable
work
The Sleeping Gypsy, Tiger in a
Tropical Storm, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, Boy on the Rocks
Movement Post-Impressionism, Naïve art,
Primitivism
Henri
Julien Félix Rousseau (French: [ɑ̃ʁi ʒyljɛ̃ feliks ʁuso]; 21 May 1844 – 2
September 1910)[1] was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or
Primitive manner.[2][3] He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer),
a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector.[1] He
started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his
job to work on his art full-time.[4]
Ridiculed
during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught
genius whose works are of high artistic quality.[5][6] Rousseau's work exerted
an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists.[4]
Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Career
1.3 Le Banquet Rousseau
1.4 Retirement and death
2 Artistry
2.1 Paintings
2.2 Criticism and recognition
3 Legacy
4 Exhibitions
5 Paintings
6 References
Biography
Early life
Rousseau
was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, in 1844 into the family of a tinsmith; he was
forced to work there as a small boy.[7] He attended Laval High School as a day
student, and then as a boarder after his father became a debtor and his parents
had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. Though mediocre in some
of his high school subjects, Rousseau won prizes for drawing and music.[8]
After high
school, he worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small
perjury and sought refuge in the army."[9] He served 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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
Career
Tiger in a
Tropical Storm (Surprised!) (1891) was the first of many jungle scenes for
which Rousseau is best known.
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 was more than a decade before Rousseau returned
to depicting his vision of jungles.[4]
In 1893,
Rousseau moved to a studio in Montparnasse where he lived and worked until his
death in 1910.[10] In 1897, he produced one of his most famous paintings, La
Bohémienne endormie (The Sleeping Gypsy).
In 1905,
Rousseau's 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.[4]
In 1907, he
was commissioned by artist Robert Delaunay's mother, Berthe, Comtesse de
Delaunay, to paint The Snake Charmer.
Le Banquet
Rousseau
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 at Le Bateau-Lavoir in Rousseau's honour.[1] Le
Banquet Rousseau, "one of the most notable social events of the twentieth
century," wrote American poet and literary critic John Malcolm Brinnin,
"was neither an orgiastic occasion nor even an opulent one. Its subsequent
fame grew from the fact that it was a colorful happening within a revolutionary
art movement at a point of that movement's earliest success, and from the fact
that it was attended by individuals whose separate influences radiated like
spokes of creative light across the art world for generations."[11]
Guests at
the banquet Rousseau included: Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Metzinger, Juan
Gris, Max Jacob, Marie Laurencin, André Salmon, Maurice Raynal, Daniel-Henri
Kahnweiler, Leo Stein, and Gertrude Stein.[12]
Maurice
Raynal, in Les Soirées de Paris, 15 January 1914, p. 69, wrote about "Le
Banquet Rousseau".[13] Years later the French writer André Salmon recalled
the setting of the illustrious banquet:
Here the nights of the Blue Period
passed... here the days of the Rose Period flowered... here the Demoiselles
d'Avignon halted in their dance to re-group themselves in accordance with the
golden number and the secret of the fourth dimension... here fraternized the
poets elevated by serious criticism into the School of the Rue Ravignan... here
in these shadowy corridors lived the true worshippers of fire ... here one
evening in the year 1908 unrolled the pageantry of the first and last banquet
offered by his admirers to the painter Henri Rousseau called the
Douanier.[11][12][14]
Retirement
and death
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 covers.[4] Rousseau
exhibited his final painting, The Dream, in March 1910, at the Salon des
Independants.
The Dream
(1910), MoMA
In the same
month Rousseau suffered a phlegmon in his leg, one which he ignored.[15] In
August, when he was admitted to the Necker Hospital[16] 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.
At his
funeral, seven friends stood at his grave: the painters Paul Signac and Manuel
Ortiz de Zárate; the artist couple Robert Delaunay and Sonia Terk; the sculptor
Brâncuși; Rousseau's landlord Armand Queval; and Guillaume Apollinaire, who
wrote the epitaph Brâncuși put on the tombstone:
We salute you Gentle 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 and Truth of Painting.
As
you once did my portrait facing the stars, lion and the gypsy.
Artistry
Paintings
The Hungry
Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, 1905
Rousseau
claimed he had "no teacher other than nature",[3] although he
admitted he had received "some advice" from two established Academic
painters, Félix Auguste Clément and Jean-Léon Gérôme.[17] Essentially, he was
self-taught and is considered to be a naïve or primitive painter.
His
best-known paintings depict jungle scenes, even though he never left France or
saw a jungle. Stories spread by admirers that his army service included the
French expeditionary force to Mexico are unfounded. His inspiration came from
illustrations in children's books[18] and the botanical gardens in Paris, as
well as tableaux of taxidermy wild animals. During his term of service, he had
also met soldiers who had survived the French expedition to Mexico, and he
listened to their stories of the subtropical country they had encountered. To
the critic Arsène Alexandre, he described his frequent visits to the Jardin des
Plantes: "When I go into the glass houses and I see the strange plants of
exotic lands, it seems to me that I enter into a dream."
Along with
his exotic scenes there was a concurrent output of smaller topographical images
of the city and its suburbs.
He claimed
to have invented a new genre of portrait landscape, which he achieved by
starting a painting with a specific view, such as a favourite part of the city,
and then depicting a person in the foreground.
Criticism
and recognition
Rousseau's
flat, seemingly childish style was disparaged by many critics; people often
were shocked by his work or ridiculed it.[6][19] His ingenuousness was extreme,
and he always aspired, in vain, to conventional acceptance. Many observers
commented that he painted like a child, but the work shows sophistication with
his particular technique.[3][6]
Legacy
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. According to Roberta Smith, an art critic
writing in The New York Times, "Beckmann’s amazing self-portraits, for
example, descend from the brusque, concentrated forms of Rousseau’s portrait of
the writer Pierre Loti."[4][20]
In 1911, a
retrospective exhibition of Rousseau's works was shown at the Salon des
Indépendants. His paintings were also shown at the first Blaue Reiter
exhibition]
Critics
have noted the influence of Rousseau on Wallace Stevens's poetry. See, for
instance, Stevens's "Floral Decorations for Bananas" in the
collection Harmonium.[citation needed]
The
American poet Sylvia Plath was a great admirer of Rousseau, referencing his
art, as well as drawing inspiration from his works in her poetry. The poem,
"Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies" (1958), is based upon his
painting, The Dream, whilst the poem "Snakecharmer" (1957) is based
upon his painting The Snake Charmer.[21]
The song
"The Jungle Line", by Joni Mitchell, is based upon a Rousseau
painting.[22]
Underground
comic artist Bill Griffith drew a four-page biographical sketch of Rousseau, A
Couch in the Sun, which was included in issue #2 of the Arcade
anthology.[citation needed]
The visual
style of Michel Ocelot's 1998 animation film, Kirikou and the Sorceress, is
partly inspired by Rousseau, particularly the depiction of the jungle
vegetation.[23]
A Rousseau
painting was used as an inspiration for the 2005 animated film Madagascar.[24]
Rousseau's
1908 painting Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo was used as the inspiration
for a series of 2021 advertisements concerning the rebrand of Facebook into the
metaverse company Meta.[25]
Exhibitions
Carnival evrning
Self portraitOther self portraitA serpent magicThe FlamingosMerry jestersLe moulinVue de pont
The dream
Bouqet of flowers
Fruts
Two major
museum exhibitions of his work were held in 1984–85 (in Paris, at the Grand
Palais; and in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art) and in 2001 (Tübingen,
Germany). "These efforts countered the persona of the humble, oblivious
naïf by detailing his assured single-mindedness and tracked the extensive
influence his work exerted on several generations of vanguard artists,"
critic Roberta Smith wrote in a review of a later exhibition.[4]
A major
exhibition of his work, "Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris", was shown
at the Tate Modern from November 2005 for four months, organised by the Tate
and the Musée d'Orsay, where the show also appeared. The exhibition,
encompassing 49 of his paintings, was on display at the National Gallery of Art
in Washington from 16 July to 15 October 2006.]
A major
collection of Rousseau's work was shown at the Grand Palais from 15 March to 19
June 2006.[
With
affection,
Ruben
.jpg)
.jpg)
