After retiring in 1893, Rousseau supplemented his small pension with a part-time job and work such as playing the violin on the street, and he also worked for some time on Le Petit Journal, where he wrote several of his covers. Rousseau’s work has had a huge impact on several generations of Avantgarde artists, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Max Beckmann and the Surrealists.
Rousseau’s work has had a huge impact on several generations of avant-garde artists whose vision, attention to detail and inability to distinguish fantasy from real life in the works he creates have given a lot of charm to the styles and works he wrote throughout his career, probably due to his lack of formal education in the art world but also because he had a different perception of reality and the work he created when he painted a large canvas on which he often created most of his works
Like most artists, shortly after his death Henri Rousseau became an extremely famous name in the art world and his paintings were in demand by collectors, museums and fans of his work in general. Most of the work he created did not sell during his career, but soon after his death there was huge demand. From this position came the name which he was well known in subsequent years.
Although there was no work to prove it, he probably painted and painted from childhood and his stated aspiration was to become an artist in the style of academics of his day, though he also somehow found time to draw and paint.
In 1886, he exhibited some of his first paintings not in the official Salon that would never have recognized an artist of such naivety, but in the Salon of the Independent. This annual exhibition was organized by young artists to give themselves and others the opportunity to exhibit without the strict formal requirements for style and content of the Salon.
He took up painting as a hobby and retired early in 1893 to be able to devote himself completely to painting. During the time Rousseau – painted as a hobby – could not be continually painted until he retired in 1893 – allowed him to devote himself entirely to painting. The less interesting middle route of paid life is believed to be what interested Henri in art – The theory was that painting was a way to shorten hours to save time.
As his work developed and he was accepted into semi-professional exhibitions, critics took notice of him. One critic believed that Van Gogh’s starry night was the single most terrifying painting by Rousseau on display at any given exhibition.
In 1905, Rousseau’s great jungle scene “A Hungry Lion Throws an Antelope” was exhibited in the Independent Salon alongside works by young avant-garde artists like Henri Matisse in what is now considered the first Fauvist exhibition. Rousseau painted his first jungle in 1891 (first photo above), “Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!)”. At the National Gallery in London and for the first time exhibited it.
Rousseau made his living as a customs inspector and tax collector (hence his nickname Le Duanier), and he learned to paint in the middle of his age inventing a naive style that at the time had few analogies and caused a lot of ridicule. from critics throughout his paint-making career.
One of the artists who projected the surreal idea of fantasy with his fresh and naive view of the world was Frenchman Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), like Paul Klee, who despite being ranked as naive or primitive (two terms for inexperienced artists) transcends this grouping.
As a child, Henri Rousseau had no experience with established artistic techniques and worked as a customs officer on the outskirts of the city most of his life but was seriously painting at the age of forty and retired at the age of 49 to pursue painting full time.
While the painterly establishment laughed and ridiculed his artistic style, he was regarded by artists outside the establishment such as Picasso, Jean Hugo, Léger, Beckmann, and later by surrealist artists. The French painter Henri Rousseau learnt to paint and exhibited his work almost every year from 1886 until the end of his life.
He was self-taught and was ridiculed by critics during his lifetime, but after his death he was recognized as a self-taught genius, whose works are of high artistic quality. He was inspired by illustrations in children’s books and the Botanical Garden of Paris, as well as paintings depicting taxidermy wildlife.
Rousseau was born in Laval, Mayenne, France in 1844 to a family of plumbing workers and was forced as a child to work in the subtropical country.
He was a regular participant in the Salon of Independents in 1886, encouraged by his friends, and left French customs in 1893 to become a full-time artist.
