Henri Julien Félix Rousseau

A French self-taught painter, one of the most famous representatives of naive art (primitivism). Having started a creative career after 40 years, the artist was eventually approved by all avant-garde movements. The development process of the art of the 20th century proved that, like many geniuses, great Henri Rousseau, nicknamed the Customs Officer, was way ahead of his era. Pictures of the artist are in the most significant museums of France, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland and the USA. The artist’s paintings are in the most significant museums of France, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland and the USA.

Key ideas:

– Undoubtedly, compared with the smooth, elegant standard of academic painting and even with the works of Impressionists and Post-impressionists, the paintings of Rousseau looked very rough, “wrong”. The figures of people and animals, objects and nature in the compositions are most often depicted awkwardly, the poses of the characters are inconvenient and even unnatural (Rousseau did not know how to draw legs, arms, or legs). There is no clear understanding of perspective in his paintings; the use of color, especially black, was rather strange. The names “naive art” and “primitivism” are absolutely precise for his kind of work, since it looks like children’s drawings, cave paintings of distant ancestors, and plane frescoes of the Middle Ages at the same time.

– Depicting scenes from the life of the jungle, Rousseau, who never traveled, relied on his imagination, on impressions and observations made in gardens and parks of Paris (“when I see plants of exotic lands in the greenhouse, it seems to me that I sleep”). Also, in his works, he used a rich album with the images of wild animals, where there were 200 illustrations and which became the reference book of the Customs Officer. However, his “wild” visions were “corrected” by observations of Parisian cultural life, as evidenced by numerous sketches – Henri’s “views” of the city.

– Rousseau carefully worked with the palette. When Italian art expert Ardengo Soffici was shocked by his painting style, the artist proudly said to him about the painting “The attack of the jaguar on the horse”: “There are 22 green shades!”

– Experts rightly point out that if Rousseau had been officially trained, he probably could not draw like that, because the teachers would tell him what to do and what not to do at all. Customs Officer Rousseau did not care about the rules, but he believed in his talent firmly. Non-recognition and mockery did not make him start studying of the rules of painting, or abandon his attempts to paint.