Henri Rousseau – Genius or Talent-less Fool?
France’s most famous naïve painter was born in 1844, the son of an ironmonger. At school, Rousseau was a poor student and failed most of his exams. By the age of 19 he found work as a clerk in a lawyer’s office, until he was sacked for stealing stamps, and imprisoned for a month.
In an effort to redeem his standing, Rousseau joined the French Infantry. After 5 years, he left the army, moved to Paris, and found work with the Customs Office. His job was to check carts for smuggled goods at the city gates. His duties were limited due to his lack of capability. At the age of about 27, Rousseau started to paint and draw in his spare time.
In 1885, some fourteen year later, Rousseau made his public debut as an artist, and exhibited two pictures at the “Salon des Artiste Independents”, an exhibiting society formed by avant-garde artists who were unable to gain acceptance at the “Salon des Artistes France”. Visitors mocked and laughed at Rousseau’s paintings, but undeterred, he continued to exhibit each year.
At the age of 59, Rousseau retired from his Customs Office job, and dedicated himself to painting. At about this time, he struck up a friendship with the writer Alfred Jerry, who acted as his publicist, and introduced Rousseau to a new circle of contacts, including Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and latterly Picasso. Rousseau painted a portrait of Jerry, who destroyed it by using the picture for pistol target practise!
Rousseau’s new friends found his naivety, and gullibility amusing, and he was subjected to a number of pranks, such as falling for a story that the President of France had invited him to a grand reception. Rousseau turned up at the gates of the Elysee Palace, only to be turned away. At the age of 63 he was arrested for fraud, because an acquaintance had persuaded him to open a bank account in a false name for the purposes of embezzlement. At his trial, Rousseau’s paintings were presented as evidence of his childish mentality. The defence counsel’s strategy worked, and Rousseau received a suspended sentence.
Rousseau died in 1910 at the age of 66, and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Few of his drawing survived; his family disposed of most of them after his death!
Rousseau’s lifelong desire was to paint in a precise and realistic style, but he lacked the necessary skill and training. In his paintings, the conventions of perspective, proportion and illumination were ignored. Rousseau liked to paint animals, and copied photographs from books using a pantograph. He could not paint feet, so always placed his subjects ankle deep in grass. To prevent the need to create an impression of depth, he often painted a profusion of vegetation.
Rousseau’s most famous painting is possibly “the Sleeping Gypsy”, for which he drew inspiration from Gerome’s fabulous “Two Majesties”. Rousseau offered to sell his painting to the mayor of his hometown, but the mayor declined the offer, and the painting was discovered 25 years later in a plumber’s workshop.
Rousseau was indifferent to the works of the progressive avant-garde artist around him, finding their paintings too unfinished. Paradoxically, these artists became appreciators of Rousseau’s work, and were instrumental in his posthumous recognition as a great painter. In his work they saw the beginnings of Surrealism, and took pleasure in the childlike quality of his pictures.
For my part, I can admire Rousseau for his dedication and effort. I cannot admire his artistic ability, because he was an adult painting like a child (in the same way that I can draw little gratification from a childish book). Rousseau believed that his paintings were stylised, yet highly realistic representations, and their surrealistic worth is entirely accidental. That doesn’t make him a great artist.
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