ROUSSEAU, Henri

The painting depicts a struggle between a tiger and a bull.

Complex arrangements of vegetation are often used by Rousseau as part of his pictorial language. The sequence of different leaf and flower patterns produces a rhythmical structure. In this portrait, the tall gaunt woman in a black dress with remarkably wide puff sleeves stands out directly in front of a background of flowers, above which only her head protrudes. The proportions are inconsistent, her hands almost larger than her head. Even more unrealistic is the scale of the head of this nameless woman and the little cat in the foreground on the right. On basis of these characteristics the painter succeeds in creating an impressive representation of the human figure.

A bombastic inscription on the back of the painting proclaims “A View of the Jardin du Luxembourg. The Monument to Chopin.Composition.” Following the example of recognized masters, Rousseau found an interesting motif and then worked it up, perfecting the composition in the studio. The thoroughly executed, immobile, and trivial details of his landscapes come together in meaningful “dumb scenes” that prompted a contemporary to dub him “the dreamer of reality.”

Rousseau was a self-taught artist whose first exhibition was held in Paris in 1886, when he was 42. He began to paint imaginary scenes set in the jungle by 1891, the present painting showing a lion devouring a jaguar was probably exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1907. The artist’s unique vision, his intuitive sense of design and colour, and his precise, profuse use of detail combine to render this mysterious, exotic world authentic. The vegetation is inspired by his visits to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, but he disregarded their actual sizes in inventing forests that dwarf the figures of natives and animals. His animals are based on photographs in a children’s book owned by his daughter.

Rousseau was an elderly amateur painter, who, for the sake of art, gave up his job. He exhibited unsuccessfully at the Salon des Ind�pendants, wrote music and plays, and kept a studio on Montmartre. By his very appearance, he epitomized a caustic parody of the traditional figure of “the Artist” rejected by the avant-garde. Early 20th-century rebels such as Matisse, Derain, and Picasso could not help but be impressed by the natural way in which Rousseau combined a faith in art with an abandonment of accepted conventions: perspective, chiaroscuro, poignant subject matter, and saccharine attractiveness.

The artist exhibited this painting in 1894 at the Salon des Ind�pendants. Although the motif is often found in nineteenth-century art, the painting nevertheless represents a completely independent work. Rousseau treats the subject of was with a naivet� reminiscent of children’s or folk art without concrete references to place and time. The picture evokes however a horribly ghostly and nightmarish atmosphere.