20 Facts About Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector.

Henri Rousseau started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

Henri Rousseau was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, in 1844 into the family of a tinsmith; he was forced to work there as a young child.

Henri Rousseau 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.

Henri Rousseau's wife died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898.

In 1893, Henri Rousseau moved to a studio in Montparnasse where he lived and worked until his death in 1910.

When Pablo Picasso happened upon a painting by Henri Rousseau being sold on the street as a canvas to be painted over, the younger artist instantly recognised Henri Rousseau's genius and went to meet him.

Guests at the banquet Rousseau included: Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Marie Laurencin, Andre Salmon, Maurice Raynal, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Leo Stein, and Gertrude Stein.

Henri Rousseau worked briefly at Le petit Journal, where he produced a number of its covers.

An equally famous work by Henri Rousseau, included in the collection of John Hay Whitney, is Tropical Forest with Monkeys, which was painted during the last months of his life.

Many of the animals in Henri Rousseau's images have human faces or attributes.

Henri Rousseau exhibited his final painting, The Dream, in March 1910, at the Salon des Independants.

Henri Rousseau's inspiration came from illustrations in children's books and the botanical gardens in Paris, as well as tableaux of taxidermy wild animals.

Henri Rousseau claimed to have invented a new genre of portrait landscape, which he achieved by starting a painting with a specific view, such as a favourite part of the city, and then depicting a person in the foreground, most notably his early Myself, Portrait-Landscape.

Henri Rousseau's ingenuousness was extreme, and he always aspired, in vain, to conventional acceptance.

Henri Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Fernand Leger Jean Metzinger, Max Beckmann, and the Surrealists.

In 1911, a retrospective exhibition of Henri Rousseau's works was shown at the Salon des Independants.

Henri Rousseau's paintings were shown at the first Blaue Reiter exhibition.

The American poet Sylvia Plath was a great admirer of Henri Rousseau, referencing his art, as well as drawing inspiration from his works in her poetry.

Henri Rousseau's 1908 painting Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo was used as the inspiration for a series of 2021 advertisements concerning the rebrand of Facebook into the metaverse company Meta.