The art world didn’t used to be quite sure what to do with an artist who hadn’t come up through the ranks in the con­ven­tion­al man­ner, by study­ing at some­where like the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts or one of the Écoles des Beaux-Arts. They cer­tain­ly didn’t know what to do with Hen­ri Rousseau (1844–1910) who only start­ed paint­ing in his ear­ly for­ties, was com­plete­ly self-taught, and had pre­vi­ous­ly been earn­ing his liv­ing as a tax col­lec­tor (hence his lat­er nick­name Le Douanier). His style, too, was not treat­ed kind­ly by crit­ics – although it would lat­er be referred to as prim­i­tivism or Naïve art, Rousseau’s paint­ings had a child­like sim­plic­i­ty and frank­ness about them that were wide­ly dis­par­aged by the high­brows.

Picas­so, though, knew a nat­ur­al born artis­tic genius when he saw one; when he hap­pened upon one of Rousseau’s paint­ings being sold on the street as a can­vas to be paint­ed over, he imme­di­ate­ly sought out and met Rousseau. Lat­er he would host a ban­quet in Rousseau’s hon­our which would become famous as a notable social event due to the time­ly pres­ence of so many artists and lit­er­ary fig­ures from the time (Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, Juan Gris, Gertrude Stein et al).

Rousseau paint­ed a lot of jun­gle scenes, even though he nev­er vis­it­ed a jun­gle nor even left France. Here’s a gallery of Rousseau’s art that show­cas­es his dis­tinct style, with appeal­ing sim­ple shapes and blocks of colour.

The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy (French: La Bohémi­enne endormie) is prob­a­bly Rousseau’s most famous paint­ing. Paint­ed in 1897, it is a fan­tas­ti­cal depic­tion of a lion mus­ing over a sleep­ing woman on a moon­lit night. Rousseau’s own descrip­tion is as good as any:

“A wan­der­ing Negress, a man­dolin play­er, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drink­ing water), over­come by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moon­light effect, very poet­ic. The scene is set in a com­plete­ly arid desert. The gyp­sy is dressed in ori­en­tal cos­tume.”

It is a bewitch­ing image; The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy is held by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York and is housed right next to Vin­cent van Gogh’s famous The Star­ry Night. That’s not a bad pair­ing!