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Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (French: [ɑ̃ʁi ʒyljɛ̃ feliks ʁuso]; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910) [1] was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. [2][3] He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. [1]
- Overview
- Early life
- Civil service career and early paintings
Henri Rousseau, (born May 21, 1844, Laval, France—died Sept. 2, 1910, Paris), French painter who is considered the archetype of the modern naive artist. He is known for his richly coloured and meticulously detailed pictures of lush jungles, wild beasts, and exotic figures. After exhibiting with the Fauves in 1905, he gained the admiration of avant-...
Rousseau, the son of a tinsmith, came from a modest background. He was a mediocre student, and he left the secondary school in Laval without having completed his studies. He soon entered military service, in which he remained for four years. During his term of service he met soldiers who had survived the French expedition to Mexico (1862–65) in sup...
Released from military service upon the death of his father (to support his widowed mother), Rousseau settled in 1868 in Paris. The following year he married Clémence Boitard, the daughter of a cabinetmaker. In Paris he began a career as a petty official, eventually (in 1871) becoming a tax collector in the Paris toll office; from this post came the name by which he was well known in later years, le Douanier (“the Customs Officer”), in spite of the fact that the toll office had no real customs functions. Working as a bureaucrat and busy with family affairs, he still somehow found time to draw and paint. Although no works remain as evidence, he had probably drawn and painted since childhood, and his stated ambition was to be a painter in the style of the academicians of his day. In 1884 he obtained permission to copy paintings at the Louvre. In 1886 he exhibited some of his first paintings, not at the official Salon, which would never have admitted a painter of such naiveté, but at the Salon des Indépendants; this annual exhibition was established by young painters to allow themselves and others a chance to exhibit free from the narrow official Salon requirements of style and subject matter.
The picture with which Rousseau made his debut at the Salon des Indépendants, Carnival Evening (1886), was a masterpiece of its kind and an impressive beginning for the artist. The approach to representation that he employed in this work is typical of “naive art.” Everything is literally and deliberately drawn—every branch of the trees is traced, the clouds have a curious solidity, and greater attention is paid to the details of costume than to the figures themselves. The design of Rousseau’s painting, however, is effectively poetic, and he achieved a striking quality of atmosphere and mood through his accurate and sensitive observation of the colours of the evening.
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In spite of this auspicious beginning, Rousseau’s work still went largely unnoticed, except for the consistent ridicule of the critics, for the next seven years. During this period he exhibited some 20 paintings at the Salon des Indépendants, but he remained essentially an amateur, dividing his time among painting, work at the toll house, and family life. His wife, who had been ill for some time, died in 1888, and within several years he lost all of his family except for a daughter, whom he sent to live with relatives.
This period of personal hardship was also a period of increased artistic activity for Rousseau. An important event in his life at this time was the Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1889; it is probable that the reconstructions of Senegalese, Tonkinese, and Tahitian landscapes at the exposition provided further inspiration for the exoticism of his later paintings. Rousseau’s enthusiasm for the fair was so great that he wrote a vaudeville play entitled A Visit to the Exposition of 1889, which he did not succeed in having produced. In this play, as in other theatrical works he wrote, his naiveté revealed itself even more than in the technical aspects of his painting. Also revealed, however, was his intense desire to express himself artistically; he even attempted to compose music. Still, his only great gift was for painting.
- Dora Vallier
Apr 2, 2014 · French artist Henri Rousseau was a self-taught painter, influencing the Parisian avant-garde movement.
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (French: [ɑ̃ʁi ʒyljɛ̃ feliks ʁuso]; May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector.
- French
- May 21, 1844
- Laval, Mayenne, France
- September 2, 1910
Henri Rousseau was the archetypal naive artist whose amateurish technique and unusual compositions earned him the respect and admiration of top modern artists.
- French
- May 21, 1844
- Laval, France
- September 2, 1910
Henri Rousseau. “Long live Rousseau!”. These words appeared on a banner decorating a party held in Paris in November 1908. The guest of honor was Henri Rousseau, a self-taught painter who had captured the imagination of a younger generation of artists and writers in the French capital.
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Oct 2, 2015 · The self-taught painter Henri Rousseau was mocked for his clumsy compositions and awkward perspectives. But if he had been trained, modern art as we know it might never have happened, writes...
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