The Dream (1910)
Henri Rousseau's jungle was imaginary. It was
a vivid never-never land of color, form, and composition. Reality hasn't much do with it. Rousseau's paintings were an alternative to reality - and much more fun to look at.
A modern equivalent might be the movie, Avatar. The flora and fauna of Avatar are completely impossible. No one cares, they're fun to look at.
Rousseau says the naked lady in, The Dream,
has fallen asleep on her couch in Paris and awakened
in a mysterious tropical rainforest - couch and all.
The concept is as childish as the rendering,
and equally charming.
The charming sincerity of naivety is invisible
to the naïve.
Rousseau's considered himself a realistic painter.
He researched all his work through regular trips to Parisian zoos, botanical gardens, and colonial expositions.
He augmented his direct observations with pictures he'd seen in books and magazines.
He once famously said to Picasso, " You and I are the greatest painters in Paris: I in the modern genre,
you in the Egyptian".
Most of Montmartre thought Rousseau an amateur painter of minimal ability. That all changed when Picasso bought a Rousseau's painting, Portrait of a Woman. The secondhand-store shopkeeper who sold the painting to Picasso for five francs helpfully suggested that the canvas was still good and could be easily painted-over.
Picasso thought the painting was so bad that it was good. Half-jokingly, he planned a dinner party to celebrate the artistry of Henri Rousseau. The invited guests were all notables, or followers, of the Montmartre's Avant-Gard: Guillaume Apollinaire; Georges Braque; Juan Gris; many others.
The guest-of-honor was not in on the joke.
Rousseau's naïve artistic style was well-known by the dinner-party guests. They knew him as, Le Douanier (the customs agent), a shy, retired Civil Servant who roamed the cafes and haunts of the Butte Montmartre frivoling at Art with unsaleable primitive paintings. Nonetheless, they heartily saluted the guest-of-honor. Apollinaire offered a poetic toast, accompanied by Braque on accordion. "These wines that in your honor Picasso pours / Let's drink them then, since it's the hour for drinking - Crying in unison: Long live Rousseau"!
There are many versions of what happened that night, none the same, but all agreeing that despite considerable drunken rowdiness, and the original intent
as joke, the amateur painter was by next morning an innovative stylist worthy of respect.
Rousseau had no doubt about being an innovative stylist worthy of respect. He'd devoted his life to serious Art long before being, "honored", at the infamous ceremonial dinner.
He couldn't afford to paint full-time until after he retired from the Customs Office at age 49, but he did paint throughout his life. The Salon des Independents exhibited some of his earlier work, though not prominently. He had some fans even before Picasso made him famous.
Luxembourg Gardens - 91909)
There was a little jungle evident even in his paintings that weren’t about jungles.
The Sleeping Gypsy (1897)
My own fandom for Rousseau began with a painting reproduced in an Art History book I read in high school. The work was titled: The Sleeping Gypsy.
The painting was beautifully weird. It seemed to have a story, but of what, I couldn't imagine. The, "gypsy", of the title looked to me to like an Arab. Why was a lion standing above a sleeping Arab on a desolate sand dune?
I was pretty sure there were no lions in the desert. Did the multi-colored garment, or the odd instrument, signify something I should know about?
The questions intrigued me.
Years later I discovered that Medieval Europeans supposed the dark-skinned travelers that roamed across their countries had come from Egypt, they shortened, Egyptian to Gypsy.
My other questions were never answered.
Unanswered questions are a big part of Rousseau's appeal. What's going on in his strange pictures. They all imply a hidden story, not told, but dreamed. He painted twenty-five jungle scenes out of a hundred-plus other subjects that were not about jungles. The dream-land quality of his jungles is never far away in any of his paintings.
A letter Rousseau wrote to a critic explains in his gracious manner:
"I am answering your kind letter immediately in order to explain to you why the sofa in question is included in my picture: The Dream. The woman sleeping on the sofa dreams she is transported into the forest, hearing the music of the snake charmers instrument. This explains why the sofa is in the picture . . . I thank you for your kind appreciation; If I have kept my naivete it is because
M. Gerome, who was professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and M. Clement, director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Lyon, always told me to keep it. So in the future you will no longer find it astonishing. And I was also told I did not belong to this century. You must realize
I cannot now change the manner I have acquired with such tubborn labor. I end this note by thanking you in advance for the article you will write about me.
Please accept my best wishes".
The Snake Charmer (1910
The Flamingoes (1907)
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)
"When I am in these hothouses and see these strange
plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am entering
a dream".