What Art Media Did Henri Rousseau Use to Paint

"When I pace into the hothouses and see the plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am in a dream."

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"I always see a painting earlier executing it."

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"Nothing makes me happier than to contemplate nature and to paint it. Would you believe that when I get out in the land and come across all that sun, all that greenery and all those flowers, I sometimes say to myself: All that belongs to me, it does!"

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"Beauty is the hope of happiness."

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"If you lot remove these lines in the painting, the colors are no longer effective."

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"I cannot now alter my mode, which I acquired, as you can imagine, by dint of labour."

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Summary of Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau became a full-time artist at the age of forty-9, after retiring from his mail service at the Paris customs office - a chore that prompted his famous nickname, "Le Douanier Rousseau," "the cost collector." Although an admirer of artists such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Leon Gerome, the self-taught Rousseau became the archetypal naïve artist. His amateurish technique and unusual compositions provoked the derision of contemporary critics, while earning the respect and adoration of mod artists like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky for revealing "the new possibilities of simplicity." Rousseau's best-known works are lush jungle scenes, inspired not by whatsoever firsthand experiences of such locales (the artist reportedly never left French republic), but by frequent trips to the Paris gardens and zoo.

Accomplishments

Although he had ambitions to become a famous academic painter, Rousseau instead became the virtual reverse: the quintessential "naïve" artist. Largely cocky-taught, Rousseau developed a style that evidenced his lack of bookish preparation, with its absence of right proportions, one-betoken perspective, and use of sharp, often unnatural colors. Such features resulted in a body of work imbued with a sense of mystery and eccentricity.
The untutored and idiosyncratic character of Rousseau'southward fine art was derided by many early viewers of his work, with one Parisian journalist memorably writing that "Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet with his eyes airtight." Notwithstanding this quality resonated with mod artists such equally Picasso, who saw in Rousseau's work a model for the sincerity and directness to which they aspired in their own work, by drawing inspiration from African tribal masks and other "primitive" and traditional art forms.
Influenced by a combination of "loftier" and "depression" sources - academic sculpture, postcards, tabloid illustrations, and trips to the Paris public zoo and gardens - Rousseau created mod, unconventional renderings of traditional genres such as mural, portraiture, and allegory. The fantastic, often outrageous imagery that resulted from these hybrid influences - most famously, a nude adult female reclining on a divan mysteriously located in a tropical jungle - was celebrated by the Surrealists, whose art valued surprising juxtapositions and dream-like moods characteristic of Rousseau's work.

Biography of Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Felix Rousseau grew upwards amongst humble circumstances in Laval, a small boondocks in northwestern France. His begetter, a metalsmith, had long-term financial difficulties, amassing enough debt to upshot in the seizure of the family house in 1851. Subsequently, the young Henri enrolled every bit a boarding student at Laval High School, which he attended until 1860. He was an average student, aside from receiving distinctions in music and drawing.

Of import Art by Henri Rousseau

Progression of Art

1890

Myself, Portrait-Mural

Here, Rousseau captures the height of greatness to which he aspired as a painter, presenting himself in outsized calibration with brush and palette in hand and wearing a conform and traditional artist's beret, before a landscape that features the Eiffel Tower and a alpine-masted ship decorated with world flags. Although he completed the portrait in 1890, Rousseau subsequently updated the work with additional autobiographical details: a ribbon of the order of bookish distinction, which he added to the lapel in 1901, after becoming a drawing instructor at the Association Philotechnique, and the names of his two wives, Clemence and Josephine, which he later painted on the palette. Rousseau's ambitions to become a noted academic painter are also evoked in the subtitle of this work, which announces a new hybrid genre - the "portrait-landscape." A contemporary critic mocked Rousseau's self-aggrandizing portrayal in this work, writing, "I plant information technology extremely hard to come to terms with Monsieur Henri Rousseau whom I shall call, if I may, the sensation at the Indépendants. G. Rousseau is aptitude on renewing the art of painting. The Portrait-Landscape is his ain invention and I would advise him to take out a patent on it, as unscrupulous characters are quite capable of using it." Rousseau proudly responded in turn, "I am the inventor of the portrait mural, as the printing has pointed out."

Oil on sheet - National Gallery, Prague

1891

Surprised! Tiger in a Tropical Tempest

In this, Rousseau's first jungle painting, a broad-eyed, tooth-begetting tiger suddenly emerges from the grass, where it has been lurking, with the waving fronds, slanting branches, pelting, and dark sky indicating the tempest cited in the title. The sail was also known every bit "Tigers Pursuing Explorers" and "Storm in the Jungle," alternating monikers suggesting some ambiguity every bit to its subject matter. Exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, this jungle scene - a theme oftentimes treated past academic artists - was ridiculed by many critics for its axiomatic amateurish quality. Yet, for the painter and critic Felix Vallotton, the work was a " 'must-see'... the alpha and omega of painting and then disconcerting that, before and so much competency and kittenish naivete, the about securely rooted convictions are held upward and questioned." Vallotton's description suggests the reasons Rousseau would be so highly acclaimed among modern artists of the early-20^th century and later.

Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, London

1897

The Sleeping Gypsy

This painting's deviation from Rousseau'due south usual subject affair led many to declare it a forgery, some fifty-fifty attributing it to André Derain. The moonlit scene takes place in a desert, where a female gypsy sleeps with a mandolin and jug by her side, untroubled and - amazingly - unharmed by a curious lion. The strangeness of the scene is enhanced by the precariously sloping plane and presentation of the animal and gypsy as if beneath the viewer'due south perspective. The gypsy is dressed in Eastern garb, while the painting as a whole recalls the stories from Arabian Nights, which had been translated into several entire versions starting in the mid-1880s. In an endeavor to sell the piece to his hometown, Rousseau sent the post-obit description to the Mayor of Laval: "A wandering negress, a mandolin player, sleeps in deep exhaustion, her jug beside her. A lion happens to laissez passer that way and sniffs at her but does non devour her." For its eerie, meditative beauty and image of humankind'south harmony with the animal kingdom, The Sleeping Gypsy has attained iconic condition. It has been altered or parodied by various artists (with the lion often replaced by a domestic dog or other animal).

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Fine art, New York

1905

The Hungry Panthera leo Throws Itself on the Antelope

The panthera leo and antelope at the center of the painting wear vacant stares that contribute to a surprisingly static attack scene, much of which is taken upwards past lush trees earlier a setting sun. Rousseau based the poses of the two animals on a diorama made for the zoological galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, habitation to a big collection of flora and fauna ofttimes visited past the creative person. With its reference to an antelope "shedding a tear," the explanation that accompanied the work reveals Rousseau's lack of firsthand experience of his wild animal subjects: "The hungry lion, throwing himself upon the antelope, devours him. The panther stands past awaiting the moment when he, too, tin claim his share. Birds of prey accept ripped out pieces of mankind from the poor fauna that sheds a tear!" Amongst his largest works at 83 past 122 inches and displayed at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the painting forcefully announced the render of Rousseau's jungle scenes, from which the artist had taken a hiatus betwixt 1891 and 1904. With its absence of 3-dimensional illusionism and depiction of jungle savagery, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope was seen as both ancient and mod, inviting comparison to fine art forms such as cave painting and fresco, while demonstrating the directness of expression to be achieved from the rejection of academic artistic principles. At the Salon, the painting hung near works by artists that included Henri Matisse and André Derain, and may accept prompted 1 keen-eyed critic to refer to the young painters as "Fauves," or "Wild Beasts."

Oil on canvas - Ernst Beyeler Collection, Basel

1910

The Dream

The Dream is an apt title for the present work, with its surreal depiction of a nude adult female reclining on a sofa in a wood. The adult female is surrounded by colorful, painstakingly depicted greenery - which reportedly included at least twenty-two shades of light-green - and inhabitants of the jungle, including several wide-eyed lions who gaze at the strange scene or at the viewer. This image of a humorously out-of-place academic-style nude - reminiscent of neoclassical odalisques portrayed by artists such as Ingres and perchance modeled on a Polish woman Rousseau once loved - in an exotic setting far from the artist's native France may be seen equally Rousseau'due south response to belatedly-19^th-century French colonialist expansion to lands he experienced only through his visits to museums and visual media like magazines and postcards. With its incredible attention to detail, vibrant palette, and absurdist combination of imagery, The Dream reveals why Rousseau's art was so admired by the Surrealists, especially the motility's founder, André Breton, who wrote, "It is with Rousseau that we can speak for the offset time of Magic Realism."

In his accompanying caption, one of the many poetic descriptions he frequently appended to his paintings, Rousseau described it thus:

Yadwigha, in a beautiful dream
Having fallen asleep softly
Heard the sound of a musette
Played by a kindly charmer
While the moon shone downwards
Upon the flowers, upon the verdant trees
The wild serpents lent their ear
To the merry tunes of the instrument.

The painting captivated the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire, who wrote, "The motion-picture show radiates dazzler, that is indisputable. I believe nobody volition laugh this year."

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Fine art, New York

1907

The Snake Charmer

This painting was commissioned by Robert Delaunay's mother, Berthe, Comtesse de Delaunay. Rousseau supposedly decided on the discipline for this painting afterward hearing her stories nigh her experiences in Republic of india. The mysterious figure of the charmer, surrounded by snakes and hidden in shadow except for a glowing pair of eyes, could virtually be mistaken for a member of the wildlife. The odd stillness of the work - characteristic of the mood of Rousseau'southward paintings as a whole - seems especially appropriate here, every bit if the song of the flute held the world in a trance. Various formal elements of the work, such as the asymmetrical composition and utilize of backlit, bright colors, anticipated the work of the Surrealist René Magritte.

Oil on sail - Musée d'Orsay, Paris

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Content compiled and written by Tracee Ng

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

"Henri Rousseau Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Tracee Ng
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 21 Jan 2012. Updated and modified regularly
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