In 1868, he married Clémence Boitard, his landlord's 15-year-old daughter, with whom he had six children (only one survived). With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. Though mediocre in some of his high school subjects, Rousseau won prizes for drawing and music.Īfter high school, he worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army." He served four years, starting in 1863. He attended Laval High School as a day student, and then as a boarder after his father became a debtor and his parents had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. ![]() Rousseau was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, in 1844 into the family of a plumber he was forced to work there as a small boy. Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists. Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. He started painting seriously in his early forties by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (French: – September 2, 1910) was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. His work has also been an inspiration for the contemporary animated film “Madagascar.” More. He may have been ridiculed during his lifetime, but he is now considered a self-trained genius, who created works of high artistic quality. He also developed the painting style of portrait landscape, in which he would place a person or a couple in the foreground of a landscape painting. He did, however, interview may soldiers who had served in the jungle in Mexico about their travels through the subtropics. There is a tale that he traveled to Mexico and fought in the subtropics as he was in the army, but this legend is untrue. ![]() He made many trips to the botanical gardens, perused illustrated books, and observed closely studied taxidermied animals. Although he had never been to a jungle (he actually never left France), many of his paintings depicted oversized plants and wild animals lurking in the shadows. Rousseau’s painting style was unlike that on any other primitive painter, and many of his paintings were jungle scenes. As such, he regarded himself very highly, and in his opinion, Picasso and he were the only two great living artists. He was unaware that he was considered untrained by established painters, and believed himself to be a great realist painter. Because of this, he was also referred to as Le Douanier, or the “Customs Officer.” He started painting seriously at the age of forty and by the time he was 49 he retired from his job in order to paint full time.Īlthough the painting establishment laughed and ridiculed his artistic style, he was highly regarded by artists who were outside the establishment, such as Picasso, Jean Hugo, Leger, Beckman, and later, painters of the Surrealist style. He was good at painting and music as a child, but spent most of his life in the profession of a customs officer at the outskirts of town. He is best known for his naïve, or primitive, childlike jungle scenes. ![]() As a self-taught painter, Henri Rousseau was completely untrained in any established art techniques.
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