The Secrets of Henri Rousseau: A Painter We Thought We Knew

The exhibition also gives us a more accurate portrayal of Rousseau, whose name is usually prefaced by the designation “self-taught”, as well as by the sobriquet Le Douanier (the customs officer), reinforcing his lack of formal artistic training. While true, he achieved more than sufficient technical skills over the years and formulated a strikingly distinctive style– a much rarer accomplishment. 

Rousseau, however, was educated, knew many of the leading artists, dealers, and critics of his day, and participated regularly in the Salon des Indépendants— hardly a naïf. He understood that painting was also a commercial enterprise for someone of his limited means, aware that he needed to please his clients if he wanted to continue painting. To that end, he would revise the compositions of the many small landscapes, still lifes, and portraits that were his bread and butter ventures, as revealed during recent conservation efforts. 

We also learn that he was guilty of embezzlement, joined the army to avoid imprisonment, wrote bad checks, and was forced to declare bankruptcy late in his life, his finances always precarious, never selling enough in his lifetime. However, he had enough confidence (and optimism) to retire at the age of 49 to exclusively pursue his painting. 

Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets is astutely organized by esteemed curators Christopher Green and Nancy Ireson by theme. Each gallery is its own show within a show, giving us a picture of daily life in France at the turn of the century, in view of the suburbs where he lived, humdrum perhaps, but also informative and cumulatively significant. 

They are an inflected autobiography, although the subjects are not always identifiable.  Among the standouts here are his allegorical War (c.1894), featuring an audacious girl warrior, who suggests Delacroix’s Marianne or perhaps Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games, and Peace (1907), a glorified tribute to France. All these lead to the culminating room in which three of his most enigmatic, exotic, and ambitious works reign: Sleeping Gypsy (1897), Unpleasant Surprise (1899-1901), and The Snake Charmer (1907), charged with colonialist implications that were largely overlooked. Altogether, the exhibition offers what many exhibitions promise but do not always deliver— an engrossing new take on an artist we thought we knew.