France, Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner. He is also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer) after his place of employment. Ridiculed during his life, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.

Moi-même/Self Portrait, 1890.
Národni galerie v Praze/ National Gallery in Prague.

'Gertrude Stein saw him as "a little small colourless Frenchman . . ." much as one saw everywhere in France, but Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) saw himself in a quite different light. This son of a tinker from the crenelated town of Laval was a painter. Moreover, he was not just any painter, but the greatest of his time, not only equal to but even slightly superior to Picasso, as he himself informed Picasso during a party at the latter's Bateau Lavoir studio. If Rousseau felt no sense of disproportion in the comparison, neither apparently did Picasso feel any sense of competition...' - JAMA, No. 19, May 19, 1999


The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, 1905, by Henri Rousseau (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910).
Work in Beyeler Foundation, Basel.


Le rêve, 1910. 204×298 cm.
Museum of Modern Art.


La charmeuse de Serpents, 1907. 169 × 190 cm.
Musée d'Orsay.


The Repast of the Lion, 1907, oil on canvas, 113,7x160 cm.
Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York.


Boy on the Rocks, 1895-1897.


Selected masterpieces and photos of the artist.