\paperw5100 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 French painter.\par
Employed in the municipal Customs service of Paris after the Franco-German war of 1870, he was given permission to cop
y pictures in the Louvre in 1884 and started to work as a self-taught painter. In 1886, having come into contact with Paul Signac, he exhibited at the second Salon des IndΘpendants. In 1893 he left his job as a customs official to devote himself to paint
ing. His early landscapes and still lifes are meticulous reproductions of reality, devoid of any traditional perspective. In the \i Portrait\i0 he painted of his first wife in 1890 (Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay), RousseauÆs original style reached its maturity.
But the work that attracted the publicÆs and the criticsÆ attention was \i War\i0 , painted in 1894 (Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay). In this painting Rousseau adopted a na∩ve and ôprimitiveö language that had no parallels in the work of his contemporaries, althou
gh some aspects of his style, such as the adoption of a two-dimensional space and the symbolic use of color, are features that he shared with Paul Gauguin and the Symbolists.\par
Made up chiefly of works painted after 1900, his work covers a variety of
themes: landscapes, portraits, patriotic and military subjects, scenes of popular life, and views of Paris. His pictures of scenes from everyday life and urban landscapes strongly influenced later painting (\i PΦre JunietÆs Cart\i0 , 1908, Paris, Collect
ion Walter; \i The Volleyball Players\i0 , 1908, New York, Guggenheim Museum). However RousseauÆs fame is due mostly to his pictures of exotic subjects, such as the\i Snake Charmer\i0 (1907, Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay), \i Virgin Forest at Sunset\i0 (1907,
Basel, Kunstmuseum), and \i Waterfall\i0 (1910, Chicago, Art Institute), in which an exotic and fantastic world becomes a dreamlike vision û the symbol of a joyful and unfettered life of the mind.\par
Apparently an ingenuous and uncultured painter, Rou
sseau nevertheless played a part in the new ferments of his time, though without fully adhering to any movement in particular. Greatly esteemed by Symbolists like Gauguin and Odilon Redon and the exponents of the historical avant-garde, his work represen
ts an original current within the figurative culture of progressive French art. In 1908, Pablo Picasso, fascinated by RousseauÆs primitive and exotic pictures, staged a famous banquet in his honor in his studio at Bateau-Lavoir, and Apollinaire wrote a f
amous epitaph for him, later carved on his tombstone by Brancusi.
