Henri Julien Félix Rousseau | Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (Father: Julien Rousseau, a tinsmith; Mother: Eléonore Guyard; Spouses: Clémence Boitard, Joséphine Noury)
Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), often affectionately and mockingly referred to as Le Douanier (the customs officer) due to his long career as a toll collector for the Paris customs office, was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. Entirely self-taught, he began painting seriously only in his early forties, retiring at age 49 to work on his art full-time.
During his lifetime, Rousseau’s work was frequently ridiculed by conservative art critics who found his flat perspectives, stiff figures, and lack of traditional academic technique to be childish. However, his vivid imagination and undeniable sense of design caught the attention of the younger generation of avant-garde artists. Giants of early 20th-century art, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Seurat, and writer Guillaume Apollinaire, recognized his genius and championed his work. Picasso famously held a legendary banquet in his studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in 1908 specifically to honor Rousseau.
Rousseau is most famous for his lush, fantastical jungle scenes, such as Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) (1891) and his final masterpiece, The Dream (1910). Ironically, despite the exotic nature of these paintings, Rousseau never left France. His “jungles” were entirely constructed from his imagination, heavily inspired by his frequent visits to the Jardin des Plantes (the botanical gardens in Paris), the Museum of Natural History, and illustrations in popular magazines and children’s books.
Alongside his jungles, he painted meticulous, somewhat surreal scenes of Parisian life, portraits, and landscapes, such as the hauntingly enigmatic The Sleeping Gypsy (1897). Though he died in poverty, Rousseau’s bold use of color, dreamlike imagery, and rejection of classical realism made him an essential bridge to Modernism and a direct precursor to Surrealism.
Active in others filds : Music (Violinist, amateur composer of waltzes), Literature (Playwright).
