Henri Rousseau: The Tax Collector who Took the Parisian Art World by ‘Surprise’
In an an art world trying to wager their bets between the snooty academic salon and the upstart impressionists, Henri Rousseau was ostensibly a ‘naive’ aberration. He was not an artist by training or profession, and his style neither mirrored or countered the mood or movement of his times. He was a customs officer at work (hence his nickname the ‘Douanier’) and he was largely self-taught. Mapped to the time period, he is now considered a Post-Impressionist, and in a further effort to align him stylistically he is labelled Primitivist a la Gauguin. Unsurprisingly, he was not recognised during his lifetime and ended up exhibiting mostly in the Salon des Independents, the refuge of those whose works were not accepted by the official Salon.
Surpris! is a notable work in his oeuvre because it is one of his earliest ‘Jungle’ paintings, a theme that he is today most remembered for. It hangs at the National Gallery London since it was acquired in 1972. As a self-taught artist, he defended himself saying that he was taught solely by nature. Ironically, his tropical wildlife renditions were inspired not by actual explorations but by taxidermy studies and visits to the botanical parks of Paris. However, to his credit, he inspired Picasso and Matisse immensely, so much so that it is speculated that the ‘Le Fauves’ owe the origin of their name partly to him.
The reason he deserves a mention is because he was an outsider who quit his job and pursue his wish to be an artist full time, painted in his own style neither influenced by the impressionists nor by the academic orientalists. In doing so, he managed to create a style that was solemnly detailed and static yet expressive and colourfully animated, in a manner combining two strengths of each of the two seemingly polar approaches. While his work overtly did not appear path breaking, it did end up having an influence on the avant-garde artists who followed.
To paint in a childlike manner was frowned upon by the art establishment, till Picasso and the others soon turned it on its head. One of Picasso’s knock-out quotes was when he said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”. Miro, Appel and Dubuffet followed into the post war years. Even today most lay people when they walk into a contemporary art exhibit, often are said to remark that their four-year-old child could have made that. But in an art world tethered by western art historical canons and contemporary critical thought, artists like Rosseau need to be acknowledged for their childlike curiosity and the courage to express themselves unshackled by convention.
