Umbrella Carré Delos Aurillac "Tempête en forêt" Du Douanier Rousseau

The artist's biography

Tempête en forêt - Henri Rousseau as Le Douanier Rousseau (1844-1910)

 Henri Rousseau was a totally self-taught painter, a contemporary of the Impressionists but a great admirer of the academic painters; he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 1886.

In 1863, he enlisted in the army for 7 years, during which he met a number of survivors of the Mexican war. He was totally fascinated by their exciting stories and descriptions of landscapes and the vegetation. Mexico took on mythical proportions for him and he tried to bring his dream to life with the brush and with colour.

His entirely imaginary jungle scenes, all painted in Paris, bear no relation to the steep mountains of Mexico and the mysterious tropical forest harbouring the Aztec and Maya pyramids, but his fantastic visions are strangely forceful.

 He likes love, mystery, travel and everything we know nothing about. He constructs his tropics with everything that peoples his dreams: colonies, far-off seas, naked savages, extraordinary creatures etc.

He loves good, finely-honed workmanship and is particularly fond of the smoothness of the materials on the surface of his canvasses.

He also loves bright, shiny, joyous colours contrasting with velvety blacks, flowers, celebrations…

His art, an explicit representation of an almost childish imagination, imbued with unprecedented spontaneity, the naivety of which takes one by surprise, remained misunderstood for a long time, but was finally acclaimed by his peers at the end of his life.