Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau (1844 - 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.
His best known paintings depict jungle scenes, even though he never left France or saw
a jungle. Stories spread by admirers that his army service included the French expeditionary
force to Mexico are unfounded. His inspiration came from illustrated books and the botanical
gardens in Paris, as well as tableaux of "taxidermified" wild animals. He had also met soldiers,
during his term of service, who had survived the French expedition to Mexico and listened to
their stories of the subtropical country they had encountered.
Along with his exotic scenes there was a concurrent output of smaller topographical images
of the city and its suburbs.
He claimed to have invented a new genre of portrait landscape, which he achieved by starting
a painting with a view such as a favourite part of the city, and then depicting a person in the foreground.
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