Henri Rousseau

Biography

Resulting from a modest family, it becomes made of lawyer with Angers. It is committed in the army shortly after avoiding the secondary continuations with a flight in its employer. It is released in 1868 following the death of his father and is then joined Paris.

He marries in 1869 Clémence Boitard with which he will have seven children, of which only one will arrive at the adulthood. He enters, after the Guerre of 1870, to the Octroi of Paris, as clerk of second class. This organization levies the taxes of the goods entering Paris. From there comes its nickname “the customs officer”. It then begins its career from painter as an autodidact. It obtains a chart of copyist to the Musée of Louvre, which enables him to be familiarized with the masterpieces. Its entry in the artistic life is thus relatively late. It tries without success to expose to the official Living room in 1885 and it is only in 1886 that it takes part in the Salon of Independent the, thanks to the absence of jury of entry. He exposes to it several paintings of which One evening with the carnival . Its notoriety increases with the years and it continues to take part each year in the Living room of the Independent ones. In 1891, it shows there its first “table of jungle”, Surpris! , representing the progression of a tiger in a luxuriant bush. This work is particularly appreciated by the painter Felix Vallotton, speaking in this connection about “Alpha and Omega about painting”.

His wife dies in 1888 and its financial position becomes difficult. It lodges a time the writer Alfred Jarry and it takes its retirement of the granting in 1893 to devote itself to painting, which does not bring to him sufficient incomes to live. It gives then courses of Violon and writes several plays. It remarie in 1899 with a widow, Joséphine Noury.

Gradually, it is made recognize and estimate by the painters avant-gardists such as André Derain or Henri Matisse. It binds friendship with Robert Delaunay, with Guillaume Apollinaire, then with Pablo Picasso.

The September 2nd 1910, it dies of the Gangrène at the Necker hospital with Paris.

Its work

To paint, he évertue to reproduce what he sees and tries to make coincide what it sees with what he knows of the facts. Exoticism abounds in its work even if Rousseau practically never left Paris. Its exoticism imaginary and is stylized, resulting from the Botanical garden, zoological gardens, illustrated reviews or reviews of botany of the time. Large recluse, it enjoys however the protection and the admiration of the artistic mediums of avant-garde. Original colourist, with a summary but precise style, it influenced the naive painting.

Let us note that the work of Rousseau temporarily slowed down the progression of the artistic research undertaken by the futuristic painters Italian, who returned to a naive painting for one short period preceding that by the “Polymatière S”.

The jungles

It is one of the most fertile sets of themes of the painter whom it continues until his death. Always in an exuberant and completely invented flora (testifies to it the many modes to bananas which hangs with each branch, or the disproportion of the foliages), it puts in scene wild combat between a deer and its prey (except in Tigre combatant a negro ), or on the contrary, a portrait more alleviated of a large animal, as in the Singes jokers . These animals were inspired to him by those of the menagerie of the garden of Acclimation and by reviews.

In its last jungles, it represented characters (in the Charming lady of snakes and the Dream ) harmonizes some with nature. Initially criticized by their lack of realism and their naivety, his “jungles” will be recognized later like models by all, from where this sentence of Guillaume Apollinaire at the time of the living room of Fall where Rousseau exposed the Dream :

Landscapes

They are is vegetable, timeless, representing places which he knows well (banks of Oise), that is to say more urban. They often comprise details in connection with the technological advance of its time: airship, telegraph poles, metallic bridges, the Eiffel tower. These landscapes remain however in a naive tonality. Indeed, Rousseau revealed there any perspective concept of .

Portraits

The characters are solidified, of face, the generally inexpressive face. If they are several, they are represented simply juxtaposed. They appear massive, gigantic in comparison with the elements of the decoration, but that seems to be a consequence owing to the fact that the painter does not control the representation of the prospects. Indeed, the landscape is almost in the same plan as the subject, with its expansion of details but with the prospect goes away. Its portraits are generally without name, even if indices make it possible to identify the character, for example Pierre Loti in his Portrait of Mr. X (1910, KunstHaus of Zurich). In the same way, the first portrait carried out by the painter, representing a woman who leaves a wood, seems to be that of his first wife, Clémence.

Its writings

It as many has in its relations painters as writers. Among the latter, one can quote, in addition to Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars and André Breton. He wrote several plays:

the Revenge on orphan Russian in 1898;
a visit with the exposure of 1899 in 1899.

He also wrote several short texts or explanatory poems on some of his works, in particular for his deadened Bohémienne (1897).

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