Rousseau

by Doreen Ehrlich

Examines the artist's life and achievements despite his nonacceptance by the art establishment, and includes more than seventy reproductions that span the full range of Rosseau's work.

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Esther]

Large format book is great to immerse into the details of Rousseau’s fine work. However this book seems to fall short, it felt like I just started when I flipped closer to the last pages.

First half of the volume were of his life and the sphere of people, artists and contemporaries around him; Apollinaire, Cézanne, Seurat, Renoir, Monet, Charles Gievre, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Picaso, Derain, Vlamick, Robert Delaunay, and so on.

“Rousseau had so strong a sense of reality that when he painted on of his fantastic subjects, he was sometimes so frightened that, trembling all over, he had to open the window”
Guillaume Apollinaire

Notes:
P12: Eugene Delacroix, Encounter Between a Lion and a Tiger prefigures Rousseau’s interest in similar jungle scenes.

P14: photography of The Jardin de Plantes in Paris. Rousseau’s visits there informed his jungle paintings.

P15: b+w photography: The playwright Alfred Jarry riding a bike with a hat. He claimed responsibility for “discovering Rousseau"

Second half of the book:
From his earlier folky approach to the more bombastic jungle foliage scenes as he’s mostly iconically remembered for. There’s a magical quality to his brushstrokes, broad strokes and refined veins at the same time.

Highlights:
P31: Rendezvous in the Forest, 1889. Oil on canvas. Lovers shrouded by giant trees and various foliage (his foliage reminded me of Indian miniatures of the Kota School of Painting)

P54: Self-Portrait with a Lamp, 1900-03. Oil on canvas. Moustachio like Dali!

P75: The Football Players (Les Joueurs de Football), 1908. Whimsical and fun, surrounded by lush foliage and happy colours, throwing a football, all men with curly moustachios, a potential scene from a Wes Anderson’s film.

P100: Exotic Landscape, 1910. Oil on canvas. A favourite! Monkeys dangling amongst trees in the jungles snacking on oranges, lush greens, dense forest. No violence, too many tigers eating other animals in the previous pages.

P108: A Horse Attacked by a Jaguar, 1910. Oil on canvas. I would like to think this horse is an unicorn (since the horse is white with white mane) with the role is reversed, the unicorn is attacking the jaguar.

[L.S.]

I discovered that Henri Rousseau is a quite interesting character. He was a painter born in the same period as Cezanne and Monet but it is difficult to categorize his paintings because of his lack of technique: he might be something in between a primitive-impressionist/ pre-cubist painter (it is said to have some influence on Picasso, Delaunay for example). He "qualifies" to be a naive painter.
But the most astonishing fact of Rousseau is his influence and involvement in the life of young avant-guard artists/ cultural figures. He used to organize cultural "soirees" and surround himself with young artists. He even wrote personalized invitation cards and wrote the formal program down. I think that this connection with the young artists came because of his childhood and young adult life: he was part of a poor family and could not "follow" his dream of being a painter till his late 40s.
He became friends with Apollinaire (who was close to Raymond Radiguet - remember? http://bit.ly/9Z7zyZ), Picasso (who bought most of his paintings), Delaunay and Brancusi (who later was to carve out his tomb stone). All these were present at the soirees. Rousseau was poor all his life, even brought in trail (he escaped because his lawyer "proved" the Court that his paintings show that Rousseau was naive, innocent).
I like his jungle/ nature paintings but not the portraits/ city landscapes.