Henri Rousseau Gallery
1891 Oil on canvas 129.8 x 161.9 cm.
National Gallery, London
This is the first of the jungle scenes on which Rousseau's fame chiefly depends. This painting was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 with the title 'Surpris!'. It was later described by the artist as representing a tiger hunting explorers.
Rousseau claimed that he had gained knowledge of the jungle while serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico in the 1860s, but this seems to be a fiction and his paintings were probably inspired by visits to the botanical gardens in Paris and by prints. The figure of the tiger may have been based on a print after a pastel by Delacroix.
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| Centennial of Independence |
| Football Players |
| Tiger and Bull |
| Fortifications |
Surprised |
| Fight |
| Exotic Landscape |
| Rabbits Meal |
Biography
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Renowned Art
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Henri, from Laval, France, and dubbed “Le Douanier” (customs officer) after his occupation found primitive art late in life. He at once mastered a landscape formula, and beginning after 1904 created more than twenty large fanatistic jungle paintings. They evidence his mastery of a formal language, oblivious of convention, that owes nothing to traditional methods. The images, smooth, vivid, and clearly defined, are flat and fluid against dense but dimensionless greenery, and although unreal and extraordinary, are rendered in meticulous botanical detail.
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