Artist in Focus: Henri Rousseau
Suggested Response
Overall activity: This activity is an exercise in visual interpretation. The objective is to
find out what Henri Rousseau’s work is trying to “say” through a close ‘looking’ and
‘reading’ of one of his paintings.
My approach: I have chosen to respond to the image with a short piece of prose, which
I feel encapsulates the mood of the image. I have then gone further to explore why
Rousseau might have represented one of the key visual elements included in his
artwork: Forests.
A Carnival Evening, 1886. Oil on Canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art
T-T. Odumosu
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A Carnival Evening
In a hazy twilight sky of baby pinks and deep blue, the full moon glows like chalk
brushed with strokes of grew shadow. This iridescent light weaves through a trellis of
branches and tall thin tree trunks – imposing their design on the skyline, like lace floating
on still waters. The clouds follow the sunset towards the night, and a final beam of
yellow filters through the poplars, resting on the hats of two small figures standing in a
clearing in front of the woods.
A man and a woman – dark skinned – stand arm in arm, and centre stage. The
expressions on their faces are hard to tell, but I’ll call them Jacques and Angelina, since
the names seem fitting. Jacques is dressed from head to toe in harlequin costume – all
in white with blue pinstripe and buttons. His white-coned hat slightly tipped. Angelina
beams in a costume of blue velvet – a dress with pink pinafore and a coned pink-andwhite striped hat, trailing ribbons. She wears blue shoes, he wears pinky-red ones.
They seem to match.
Behind them a small pergola - almost transparent - merges into the trees and foliage. A
mask half white and half in shadow, sits on one of its columns. A face emerging from
the scenery…watching, waiting? Or is it a friendly reminder of the carnival festivities that
echo from beyond the forest – mischievous graffiti crafted by Jacques, with the chalk
that he holds in his right hand?
Jacques and Angelina seem familiar. Lost characters from a children’s bedtime story, or
maybe puppets come alive by moonlight, in their elaborate set. Or, creeping off the lid
of a biscuit tin – summoned by the trumpet and drum of the nights escapades - they’ve
bravely wandered into the night…
T-T. Odumosu
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A bit about Rousseau…relevant to this painting (I think)
Henri Rousseau’s painting of a Carnival evening is a feast for the imagination. It’s sheer
simplicity, haunting quietness, and the inclusion of two mysterious figures in the middle
of the forest; evoke a magical, otherworldly mood.
A Carnival Evening was one of Rousseau’s first formally exhibited works. Having been
rejected by the art establishment at the formal Salon, Rousseau presented this particular
painting on the 18th August 1886 in an open group exhibition organised by the Société
des Artistes Indépendants. This group, established two years earlier in 1884, sought to
exhibit work by contemporary artists, typically rejected by the Salon as too modern or
radical. Artists Paul Signac, Georges Seurat and Odilon Redon (amongst others),
founded the group with an open selection criteria that had no jury or subsequent awards.
The Société exhibitions were an ideal space for Rousseau to exhibit his art. He had no
formal training, and had spent much of his adult life collecting customs fees as a toll
officer in Paris. Hence he adopted the affectionate
nickname “le Douanier”.
Rousseau himself noted that he had not picked up a
paintbrush until he was at least forty or so years old, when
he was granted a license to copy art in places such as the
Louvre, the palace of Versailles and in the state galleries.
Consequently many have described his approach to art
as that of a ‘Sunday painter’. Self taught, his technique
included painting colours on the canvas one at a time,
and starting from the top of the canvas working down to
the bottom. In spite of his inclusion into the Société des
Artistes Indépendants, and his consequent mingling in
avant garde circles, his technique and style remained the
same all his life.
Rousseau also sought advice from academic artists such
as Felix-Auguste Clément and Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Drawing on some of their methods, he maintained a
consistent practice of painting exactly what he “saw”.
He is quoted as having said that:
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Working in
Marble or The Artist Sculpting
Tanagra, 1890. Oil on Canvas.
Dahesh Museum of Art, New York
“Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.”
This dedication to painting using sight and perception, rather than adhering to academic
rules, conventions or even theoretical discourses; I think is critical to understanding
Rousseau’s art.
Yet what Rousseau saw, was not translated onto the canvas in ways that were
appreciated or understood by many of his contemporaries. Some believed his work to
be childish and simplistic, and others simply questioned his lack of experience. The
words ‘primitive’ or ‘naïve’ were often used to describe his work.
T-T. Odumosu
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Rousseau and the enchanted forest
Returning to his Carnival Evening, I think it can be argued that Rousseau invests a kind
of magical realism into his puppet-like characters and enchanted forest.
Rousseau drew his inspiration and visual material for his paintings, almost exclusively
from the city around him. He was fascinated by natural history, and regularly visited the
zoo and botanical gardens in the huge Jardin des Plantes in Paris. This was also where
the Natural History Museum was situated. Rousseau also looked at illustrated books on
botanical subjects, as well as a 200-page illustrated album entitled Bêtes Sauvages
(Wild Beasts). It is in the gardens of Paris, that he became enchanted by animals,
botany, and the exotic.
Speaking to an art critic Rousseau once noted:
“When I go into the glass houses and I see the
strange plants of exotic lands, it seems to me
that I enter into a dream.”
Rousseau never left France, but the forest and later
the jungle, were recurring settings for his art. He
uses the forest in particular, several times – in each
instance the forest dominates most of the canvas,
and one or two relatively small characters emerge
from the branches or stand as if lost amidst the
trees. This can be seen in the paintings such as
The Walk in the Forest, c.1886 and also in
Rendezvous in the Forest, 1889 – in which a couple
share a private kiss in the foliage.
Another later painting, Woman walking in an exotic
Henri Rousseau, Woman walking in an exotic
forest, 1905, is also interesting to further explore
Forest, 1905. Oil on canvas. The Barnes
(see right). Here a woman in a light-pink dress
Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania.
appears from behind the leaves of four gigantic blue
flowers. Above these, trees filled with huge oranges, cover the top section of the image.
In this painting Rousseau has distorted scale, producing a surreal effect that illustrates
the dream-like qualities he had experienced in his trips to the botanical gardens.
It may or may not be useful to highlight that Lewis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland
(1865), was a well-known story for children and adults, by the time Rousseau was
making his art.
Although Rousseau’s art was often derided and mocked by his contemporaries, his
expression of the ‘largeness’ of nature in contrast to humans seems to illustrate the real
feelings or emotions that people might experience in similar settings. Don’t we always
feel small in the woods, or at sea, or on a huge mountaintop? So perhaps Rousseau’s
forests can be seen as symbolic illustrations of ‘man’s’ true relationship to nature,
reflected through scale?
T-T. Odumosu
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There is also a sense of the voyeuristic in these forest images – as if Rousseau himself
hides behind a tree somewhere, watching people marvel, walk and kiss in the gardens
of Paris.
Yet I would argue that, more than anything, the forest could be read as a metaphor for
the imagination, in which familiar people and objects appear – part remembered and
part created as part of a new world made by Rousseau.
Perhaps this is why he has been called the “grandfather” of surrealism.
Web Bibliography:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/rousseau/default.shtm
http://www.artelino.com/articles/henri_rousseau.asp
http://www.henrirousseau.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/rousseau/index.shtm
T-T. Odumosu
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