Henri rousseau biography artist maryland

Despite lacking formal education, Rousseau's works were highly regarded as solid works of art. He believed that his only teacher was nature. Early in his life, Rousseau worked as a customs officer. However, in his mature years, he made a switch to painting. He studied at Laval High School and later became a boarder due to his father's debts.

When his parents left the city, their house was confiscated. Rousseau struggled in some subjects at school, but he excelled in drawing and music lessons, even receiving awards for his achievements. Rousseau briefly studied law and worked as a lawyer, but a failed attempt at providing false testimony forced him to seek refuge in the army, where he served for four years starting in To supplement his income, he offered violin and painting lessons, created commissioned portraits, and even performed as a street musician.

His works often contained imaginative inaccuracies, such as bananas growing upside down or animals from different continents appearing together in unrealistic combinations. Self-taught in technique, Rousseau painted methodically, applying colors one at a time—blue, green, and so forth—and working from the top to the bottom of the canvas. Despite a lack of formal training, his unique methods contributed to his distinctive style.

This thematic shift earned him posthumous recognition as a precursor to the Surrealist movement. Despite his outsider status, Rousseau gained the attention of prominent avant-garde artists. Whether they genuinely appreciated his work or viewed him as a curiosity is still debated. He was an average student, aside from receiving distinctions in music and drawing.

The family moved to Angers inwhere Rousseau found a job as a clerk for the local bailiff. He managed to avoid the military draft by drawing lots, but ended up serving in the 51 st infantry regiment to avoid scandal after his employer accused him of theft. His seven years of active duty passed uneventfully in France, but Rousseau often embellished accounts of his military feats.

One of his fabricated adventures involved helping to stem the uprising against Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, where he would ostensibly have been exposed to the jungle life that inspired his later paintings. Rousseau married his first wife, Clemence Boitard, in Of their several children, only a daughter, Julia, survived into adulthood.

After leaving the regiment he took a job checking goods for the toll authority, which gained him the lifelong nickname of "Le Douanier. The beginnings of his career as an artist are uncertain, but he claimed that he began to paint at the age of fortywhich corresponds to the time that he obtained a license to make copies of paintings at the Louvre.

His job as a customs officer required only occasional periods of diligence, and it is possible that Rousseau was able to practice drawing during slow periods at work. The two paintings chosen for the show illustrate his vacillation between tradition and modernity: Italian Dance depicts a subject popularized by academic painters, while the other, Sunsethandles a theme favored by the Impressionists.

Henri rousseau biography artist maryland: Henri Rousseau was a

Contrary to Rousseau's accounts of these works, they were most likely inspired by trips to the Paris Jardin des Plantes and the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle. InRousseau traveled to Paris for the World's Fair, which inspired him to write a play about the experience. The fair was also incorporated into the background of the painting Myself, Portrait-Landscapewhich was received by critics with mockery and sarcasm.

Taking early retirement from the customs office inRousseau became a full-time painter. Warexhibited at that year's Independants, marked a turning point in his career. The large-scale allegorical painting garnered him his only positive review to date in the journal Mercure de France. It also attracted the attention of the poet and writer Alfred Jarry, who published a lithograph of War in his magazine.

Henri rousseau biography artist maryland: Self-taught, eccentric, imbued with an unworldly

Rousseau executed a portrait of Jarry inwhich was later destroyed by Jarry himself for the novelty of ruining his own image. Inten years after the death of his first wife, Rousseau married Josephine Noury, a widow. Continuing to seek acclaim, he entered two competitions between and to paint the town halls of Vincennes and Asnieres, respectively, but failed to win either.

Through commentary from the press, however, he came to realize that he had gained a degree of notoriety with his jungle paintings, and returned to the subject with Scouts Attacked by the Tiger in It was around this time that the younger generation of artists discovered Rousseau, whose work seemed closely related to the "primitive" art that was becoming popular among many members of the avant-garde.

InRousseau met Wilhelm Uhde, a German art collector and critic who was instrumental in promoting his work during the last years of his life. Rousseau's career suffered a setback, however, when he was imprisoned for bank fraud in The series of notes he wrote to the judge petitioning for release, which exaggerated his character and his merits, account for some of the most accurate information on the artist in existence today.

Uhde organized Rousseau's first, though unsuccessful, solo exhibition in In the same year, Pablo Picasso purchased Rousseau's Portrait of a Woman that he found in a secondhand shop. To celebrate his acquisition, Picasso hosted a now-legendary party that inspired colorful written accounts by many of the guests, including Gertrude Stein. 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 landscapewhich he achieved by starting a painting with a specific view, such as a favourite part of the city, and then depicting a person in the foreground, most notably his early Myself, Portrait-Landscape Rousseau's flat, seemingly childish style was disparaged by many critics; people often were shocked by his work or ridiculed it.

Henri rousseau biography artist maryland: Rousseau was best known for his

Many observers commented that he painted like a child, but the work shows sophistication with his particular technique. His paintings were also shown at the first Blaue Reiter exhibition. Critics have noted the influence of Rousseau on Wallace Stevens 's poetry. The American poet Sylvia Plath was a great admirer of Rousseau, referencing his art, as well as drawing inspiration from his works in her poetry.

Underground comic artist Bill Griffith drew a four-page biographical sketch of Rousseau, A Couch in the Sunwhich was included in issue 2 of the Arcade anthology. The visual style of Michel Ocelot 's animation film, Kirikou and the Sorceressis partly inspired by Rousseau, particularly the depiction of the jungle vegetation. A Rousseau painting was used as an inspiration for the animated film Madagascar.

Henri rousseau biography artist maryland: BIOGRAPHY Henri Emilien Rousseau was

Rousseau's painting Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo was used as the inspiration for a series of advertisements concerning the rebrand of Facebook into the metaverse company Meta. The exhibition, encompassing 48 of his paintings, was on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 16 July to 15 October and at the Grand Palais in Paris from 15 March to 19 June Contents move to sidebar hide.

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