Henri Rousseau in 10 Paintings: Like Nothing You’ve Seen Before

Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was born on May 21st, 1844 in Laval, France. Art history remembers him as one of the greatest self-taught artists, as he never acquired formal education or professional training. He also didn’t pursue painting full-time until his late 40s. While he didn’t lack creativity, his unskilled compositions were often ridiculed. Was he a mediocre, unskilled artist, or maybe just . . . ahead of his time?

Rousseau’s early life was marked by a 4-year-long stint in the army, and later, a civil service career as a toll and tax collector. Initially, he worked for a lawyer, but after a small, alleged theft, he enlisted in the military to avoid a charge. During his service, he was stationed at the Angers barracks, where he heard soldiers’ accounts from the Second Franco-Mexican War. These stories had a strong influence on his imagination and would inspire his later exotic jungle artworks.

Following his father’s death in 1868, Rousseau left the army and relocated to Paris. There, he married Clémence Boitard and returned to civil service. He would be later nicknamed “Le Douanier” (in French, customs officer) which refers to his job in Octroi, a toll-collecting company in Paris.

1. Carnival Evening

In 1884, Rousseau officially started his meant-to-be path. He obtained a copyist’s permit for the Louvre, Luxembourg, and Versailles museums. Before finding his own style, he tried painting Impressionists and other academic pieces. Rejected from the official Salon, he found his place with the Salon des Indépendants. The following year, the group organized its own exhibitions featuring Henri Rousseau’s Carnival Evening.

This poetic painting depicts a couple in festive, carnival costumes. The man in a Pierrot costume links arms with his beloved. Maybe they worked during a carnival evening show, and are now going on a date? Watch closely, as the unexpected face of a man peeks from the empty hut behind them. Is he their friend or does he bring danger? I do hope the date ends well.

The composition is dominated by a skyscape, with a large glowing moon, clouds, and scattered stars. Realistic, and dreamlike at the same time, this artwork already carries signatures of Rousseau’s artistic soul.

2. Myself, Portrait-Landscape

The desire for creative expression could have been Henri Rousseau’s way of distracting himself or processing some hardships in his personal life. After several deaths in his family, including the passing of his first wife Clémence in 1888, the artist tried himself in several fields. He tried composing music and was a proficient fiddle player. After attending the 1889 Paris Exposition and viewing reconstructions of Senegalese, Tonkinese, and Tahitian landscapes, he wrote a short comedy play. It was never produced, but lucky for us, Rousseau later channeled his awe of exotic landscapes into paintings.

Not a customs officer, a composer, or a playwright, Henri Rousseau was surely a painter. That’s how we see him in Myself, Portrait-Landscape. He stands in an elegant suit, holding a brush and a palette, featuring the names of his two wives Clémence and Josephine.

Pinned to his jacket, is an insignia pin of the Ordre des Palmes académiques, a national French order awarded to distinguished academics and eminent university members. He never really received this award—he was mistakenly nominated instead of his namesake, a French historian and university professor. Quite unlucky, a mistaken nomination letter happened to Rousseau not once, but twice in his life.

Behind the artist, is an urban Parisian background with the old Pont du Carrousel bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and a ship decorated with international maritime signal flags. The sky carries a shadow of a hot-air balloon, and a red clouded sun, inspired by Jean-Léon Gérôme‘s 1884 Les deux majestés.

3. The War

In 1893, Rousseau quit his job at the toll house and devoted himself fully to painting. He was introduced to the intellectual circle of the avant-garde Le Mercure de France review. The magazine published the first positive recognition of Rousseau’s art, featuring his 1894 The War canvas on exhibit at the Salon des Indépendants. Painter Louis George Eléonor Roy wrote:

It’s with this work that Rousseau gained more popularity and began to be treated more seriously as a painter of his own style. Part of the Musee d’Orsay collection, The War is inspired by Rousseau’s own experiences (and stories he heard) during his military service. It depicts Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, galloping on her dark horse through a field of piled bodies. Crows are feeding on the flesh, the trees are charred and broken—it’s the aftermath of a grim battle. Rousseau conveyed the dramatic feeling of the scene through his use of dark colors and the parallel composition of the stretched-out, lifeless bodies.

4. The Sleeping Gypsy

The Sleeping Gypsy portrays a woman sleeping in an arid desert, while a huge lion stands above her. She has few possessions—a water jug, a mandolin, a blanket, and a walking stick she is grasping in her hand. The bare desert is her home, as she is a wanderer, taking a break for the night. Rousseau himself describes her as a mandolin player, overcome by fatigue in deep sleep.

The lion above seems to be dipping his head to carefully sniff her. That doesn’t sound good, yet the scene seems peaceful. Is the wild animal real, or are we looking into the woman’s dream? The mysterious Sleeping Gypsy is a perfect representation of Rousseau’s biggest talent—his ability to create a whimsical, dream-like, magical realism.

5. The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

The Hungry Lion was created in 1905 and now belongs to the collection of Foundation Beyeler in Switzerland. It was Henri Rousseau’s second jungle-themed painting. He resumed this topic ten years after exhibiting Tiger in a Tropical Storm and being ridiculed at the 1891 Salon des Indépendants. But where academics saw childish, clumsy compositions, future art critics recognized a dramatic masterpiece.

Rousseau’s passion for jungle greenery stems from his frequent visits to the botanical gardens of Paris. He never traveled outside of France, so perhaps he imagined his escapes while strolling and viewing subtropical flowers. Other than flora, the Jardin des Plantes collection consists of many stuffed animal specimens. The gory topic and poses in The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope are directly adapted from one of the gallery’s dioramas.

The beautiful exotic landscape is a silent witness to a carnal, primal scene. The antelope has met her demise. In the painting’s caption, Henri Rousseau describes the dramatic scene: “The lion, being hungry, throws itself on the antelope, [and] devours it. The panther anxiously awaits the moment when it too can claim its share. Birds of prey have each torn a piece of flesh from the top of the poor animal, which sheds a tear. The sun sets.”

6. The Flamingoes

“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”, Rousseau once said about his visits to the botanical museum. Other than from the Jardin des Plantes exhibitions, the artist drew inspiration from books and magazines. The Flamingoes, held in a private collection, are another great example of these botanical dreams.

This painting shows a flamboyance of pink flamingoes standing on a sandy river bank. The birds are different sizes, with one especially small, perhaps a baby chick. In the midground, water lilies are floating on the water’s surface. Their vibrant shades of yellow, pink, and white contrast with the subdued color scheme of the rest of the canvas. Further back is a small narrative element with figures of fishermen on the sandbar. The background shows the beginning of a lush jungle, with tall palm trees painted in simple brushstrokes.

The setting is so idyllic it seems like a postcard from the holidays. Many rumors of that time attributed the painting to Rousseau’s great travels to Mexico. History shows, that even though stationed with the soldier units from the 1861 French intervention in Mexico, Rousseau never got to leave his home country. The artist himself never denied nor approved of these rumors, and these stories will later turn into a part of his “personal mythology”.

7. La Carriole du Père Junier

La Carriole du Père Junier (Old Junier’s Cart) from the Musée de l’Orangerie collection, is a group portrait of Henri Rousseau and the Junier merchant family with their three dogs. “Père Junier” was a vegetable seller and a longtime friend of Rousseau. He commissioned the painting to settle a monetary debt, and the artist worked based on a photograph and used a pantograph to transfer his sketches to canvas.

Compared to the original snapshot, there are changes in the positioning of the trees and the dogs. This was the artist’s naive way of creating visual depth—the differences in the dogs’ sizes help visualize the scale of both the carriage and the horse. Rousseau’s masterwork with imaginary dream scenes didn’t translate to more casual portrayals—the figures stay in awkward frontal poses, the children are just “smaller people”, and the pretty horse tip-toes on its hooves on the badly rendered ground. Putting all that aside, the Juniers seem to be a nice family, with excellent taste in dogs.

8. Portrait of a Woman

Portrait of a Woman, created in 1895, depicts an unknown woman standing on a balcony. Perhaps she was also passionate about botany, as there are garden pots with pansies, scorpion grasses, and daises behind her. Between her fingers, she holds a cutting of a flower, and with her other hand, she grasps a stalk-like green branch. These attributes, typical of portrait painting, may hint at her profession. In the sky, a lonely bird is flying by. As with other Rousseau artworks, it’s hard to know if these are metaphors or just the way he happened to see the scene.

This painting was purchased in 1908 by Pablo Picasso and currently resides at the Musée Picasso in Paris. The Spaniard bought it for a bargain in a Paris junk shop and felt like he discovered an unknown gem. And he really did! Fascinated by the artwork, he befriended Rousseau, and the very same year threw him the legendary “Le Banquet Rousseau”.

Picasso, before such events gained fame and money, called all his friends of the Montmartre avant-garde scene to a celebratory banquet in Rousseau’s honor. According to the anecdotes, the party was meant to be a big joke and a way to humiliate the “naive” artist. It was a rather grotesque scene—Henri Rousseau was set on a “throne”, a Louis Philippe armchair, above him a huge “Glory” banner, and poet Guillaume Apollinaire recited odes to Rousseau’s mythical bravery in his Mexico battles—all of it with Portrait of a Women in the center. The catering was mistakenly ordered for two days later, but the alcoholic beverages were not forgotten, and the drunken party even got to hear Rousseau play on his fiddle.

If Picasso really meant to play a joke, he nonetheless did Rousseau a huge favor. Not only did he throw him the banquet of his life, but also exposed his art and character to a wider audience. Before returning home, The Douanier exclaimed to Picasso: “You and I are the greatest painters of our time. You, in the Egyptian style, and I, in the modern!”.

9. The Snake Charmer

In his last years of life, Rousseau gained a few admirers, among them artists of the emerging art movements such as Paul Signac, Georges Braque, and Robert Delaunay. The Snake Charmer was commissioned by Delaunay’s mother and is based on the stories of her trip to India. It portrays Eve in a tropical Garden of Eden, charming the snake with the melody of her flute. Listening along to the tune are three parrots, sitting on the deep green leaves, and a pink bird.

This 1907 painting perfectly embodies the artist’s distinctive style: greenery-based composition, mysterious details, animals, and a dream-like story suspended in a silent flora. It’s worth paying close attention to the foliage—it is painted with attention to detail and care.

10. The Dream

Shortly before his passing, Rousseau reached the pinnacle of his art. The Dream, now part of the New York MoMA collection, is an impressive fantasy piece and the artist’s last completed work. It depicts a nude woman lounging on a red sofa in the middle of a vigorous green jungle. In the painting’s poetic inscription, Henri Rousseau describes Yadwigha, transported to the exotic scenery in her dream. She dreams of rich shades of green and large lotus flowers, thick tropical trees with colorful fruit, and a luminous moon. Stretching on her sofa in a reclining, Olympia pose, she listens to the tune of a mysterious horn player, camouflaged in the foliage. He gazes directly at us, enchanting us right into the scene.

After the piece was exhibited, previously sarcastic Apollinaire wrote:

On September 2, 1910, Henri Rousseau died as a result of a bad infection in his leg. A year later, he was honored with a retrospective at Salon des Indépendants. His work continued to influence the following generations of modern artists, having a special impact on Surrealism.