Dreamlike vision of a self-taught genius
For an artist driven to create exotic, vibrantly imaginative landscapes, Henri Rousseau’s own reality appears somewhat humdrum by the standards of the French avant-garde.
He was born in France in 1844, the son of a plumber, and as a young boy was obliged to assist his father. At school, he won prizes for music and drawing, talents that would prove useful later in life.
After finishing secondary education, he studied law, but soon after joining chambers he was arrested for committing perjury. To avoid a jail sentence, he sought refuge in the army, serving for four years before being given a compassionate discharge when his father died. He was fortunate enough to have avoided any combat.
Rousseau moved to Paris to support his mother, and took up employment with the government as a toll collector, a post that was to leave its mark – he was stuck with the nickname of “Le Douanier”, the customs officer, throughout his career.
Rousseau didn’t explore his artistic interests until later in life, starting to paint seriously in his early forties and only retiring from toll collecting at 49. He was largely self-taught – he would copy paintings in the art museums of Paris and sketch constantly around the city.
Arguably, it was his lack of training and any academic influence that led him to develop such a personalised style. He hadn’t formally studied perspective or anatomy, so his landscapes are ambiguous, his attempts at scale unrealistic. Instead, the pictures possess an intense, dreamlike quality.
This lack of formal instruction was of no consequence to the younger generation of painters, who began to take notice of Rousseau’s works, even becoming influenced by them. Likely, they were drawn to his style, which was derived from popular print culture – sharp colours, and precise outlines – and soon he became known as a founder of the naive, or primitive style.
Throughout his short career, he painted more than 25 jungle scenes. His final work, The Dream, painted in 1910, was the most ambitious, and is said to have used at least 22 shades of green. Perhaps most surprising about Rousseau’s fascination with such alien, unfamiliar locations is the fact he never saw a jungle, or even left France, in his life.
His inspiration came from illustrations in children’s books and the botanical gardens in Paris. For his animal subjects, he studied taxidermy tableaux of wild beasts. He also listened to the stories of soldiers he had befriended during his army days, particularly their expedition to Mexico in the 1860s.
The Sleeping Gypsy, painted in 1897, was first exhibited the next year in the 13th Salon des Indépendants that also showcased other Academy-rejected artists, including Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin. Rousseau would exhibit regularly in this salon and, though his work was far from prominently featured, it gathered a committed following over the years.
The Sleeping Gypsy is a fantastical depiction of a wandering woman, overcome with fatigue and sleeping deeply, dressed in brightly coloured tribal stripes, lying beside her mandolin, as the moon shines brightly in the clear night sky. A lion picks up the woman’s scent, muses over, yet does not devour her or disturb the stillness of the poetic moment.
Picasso was one of the first to recognise Rousseau’s genius. Supposedly, he passed him on the street one day when Rousseau was trying to sell his paintings as canvases to be painted over. So struck was Picasso by these intoxicating works that he threw a banquet in Rousseau’s honour attended by many influential figures.
Nonetheless, Rousseau never made money from his art, having to supplement his small pension with part-time jobs – he often played the violin in the street, and produced a number of covers for Le Petit Journal.
In the same month that he exhibited The Dream, at the Salon des Indépendants, he suffered an infection in his leg which he ignored. Soon after, he was admitted to hospital, where they found his leg to be gangrenous. They operated, but he died from a blood clot in September 1910.
For a man who was an outsider and had spent the majority of his working life as a menial government official, an illustrious group of friends stood around the grave at his funeral, including the painter Paul Signac, the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, and Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet, who wrote his epitaph. Despite being ridiculed by almost all critics throughout his career (his flat, almost childlike style was firmly disparaged) Rousseau came to be recognised as a self-taught master. He accepted that his was an unconventional technique, and he constantly aspired to receive acceptance and praise. It was his non-conformist reputation that made him such an idol to so many subsequent artists of all kinds.
The poet Sylvia Plath, for instance, was a great admirer, drawing inspiration for her own work. The singer Joni Mitchell wrote The Jungle Line after a Rousseau painting, and his pictures have been a source of inspiration for many films.
He was a risk-taker throughout his life, despite having spent it in relative poverty. At the age of 63, an acquaintance convinced him to participate in a minor bank fraud. It is unclear whether he was tricked or went along willingly, but either way, his defence relied on his being unworldly, and this led to his release.
Perhaps Rousseau truly was a spirit of the wondrous jungle scenes he magically portrayed.