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A photo of Henri Rousseau by Dornac –

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born on 21 May 1844 and died on 2 September 1910. He was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. In the article are the top ten fascinating facts about Henri Rousseau.

1. He first became a border after his family went broke

Henri was born into a family of tinsmiths. He was forced to work in their family business as a small boy. He attended Laval High School as a day student because he still had duties at his family’s business. Henri became a boarder after his father became a debtor.

Their house was seized and his parents had to leave the town. Though mediocre in some of his high school subjects, Rousseau won prizes for drawing and music.

2. He married twice in his lifetime

Henri married Clémence Boitard in 1868. To be exclusive, Clémence was his landlord’s 15-year-old daughter. The couple was blessed with six children. Unfortunately, only one survived while the others succumbed to illness.

In 1871, he was appointed as a collector of the octroi of Â鶹APP, collecting taxes on goods entering Â鶹APP. His wife died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898. It is not clear whether Josephine bore Henri’s children or not.

3. Henri was a lawyer before he became a painter

Though Rousseau won prizes for drawing and music, he worked as a lawyer after high school and studied law. However, he attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army. He served four years, starting in 1863.

With his father’s death, Rousseau moved to Â鶹APP in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. When he moved to aris was when he decided to major majorly in his passion for drawing.

4. He started professional painting at age forty-nine

Henri Rousseau became a full-time artist at the age of forty-nine. This was after retiring from his post at the Â鶹APP customs office, a job that prompted his famous nickname, “Le Douanier Rousseau,” “the toll collector.”

The self-taught Rousseau became the archetypal naïve artist. His amateurish technique and unusual compositions provoked the derision of contemporary critics while earning the respect and admiration of modern artists like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky for revealing “the new possibilities of simplicity.”

5. Henri exhibited regularly in the Salon des Indépendants

The Société des Artistes Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists) or Salon des Indépendants was formed in Â鶹APP on 29 July 1884. The association began with the organization of massive exhibitions in Â鶹APP, choosing the slogan “sans jury ni récompense” (“without jury nor reward”).

From 1886, he exhibited regularly in the Salon des Indépendants, and, although his work was not placed prominently, it drew an increasing following over the years. Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) was exhibited in 1891.

Rousseau received his first serious review when the young artist Félix Vallotton wrote, “His tiger surprising its prey ought not to be missed. It’s the alpha and omega of painting.”

6. Pablo Picasso held a half-burlesque banquet in his studio to honour Henri

Pablo Picasso photo by

When Pablo Picasso happened upon a painting by Rousseau being sold on the street as a canvas to be painted over, the younger artist instantly recognised Rousseau’s genius and went to meet him.

In 1908, Picasso held a half-serious, half-burlesque banquet in his studio at Le Bateau-Lavoir in Rousseau’s honour. Le Banquet Rousseau, one of the most notable social events of the twentieth century, wrote that the American poet and literary critic John Malcolm Brinnin was neither an orgiastic occasion nor even an opulent one.

The subsequent fame grew from the fact that the banquet was a colourful happening within a revolutionary art movement at a point of that movement’s earliest success, and from the fact that it was attended by individuals whose separate influences radiated like spokes of creative light across the art world for generations.

7. It is because of ignorance that Henri died from a blood clot

In March 1910 Rousseau suffered a phlegmon in his leg, one which he ignored. In August, when he was admitted to the Necker Hospital in Â鶹APP where his son had died. He was found to have gangrene in his leg. After an operation, he died from a blood clot on 2 September 1910.

8. The epitaph µþ°ùâ²Ô³¦³ÜÈ™¾± placed on his tomb was written by famous painters and artists

At his funeral, seven friends stood at his grave. The painters were Paul Signac and Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, the artist couple Robert Delaunay and Sonia Terk, the sculptor µþ°ùâ²Ô³¦³ÜÈ™¾±, Rousseau’s landlord Armand Queval, and Guillaume Apollinaire were the seven friends of Henri.

The same friends are the ones who wrote the epitaph µþ°ùâ²Ô³¦³ÜÈ™¾± put on the tombstone. The epitaph read: We salute you Gentle Rousseau you can hear us… Let our luggage pass duty-free through the gates of heaven. We will bring you brushes paints and canvas…

9. Where did Henri find inspiration for his drawings?

Rousseau claimed he had no teacher other than nature and some advice from established Academic painters like Félix Auguste Clément and Jean-Léon Gérôme only. He was self-taught and is considered to be a naïve or primitive painter.

His best-known paintings depict jungle scenes, even though he never left France or saw a jungle. Stories spread by admirers that his army service included the French expeditionary force to Mexico are unfounded.

His inspiration came from illustrations in children’s books and the botanical gardens in Â鶹APP, as well as tableaux of taxidermy wild animals.

During his term of service, he had also met soldiers who had survived the French expedition to Mexico, and he listened to their stories of the subtropical country they had encountered.

10. His art “Jungles in Â鶹APP” received a major exhibition in 2005

The exhibition was organised by the Tate and the Musée d’Orsay, where the show also appeared. The exhibition, encompassing 49 of his paintings, was on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 16 July to 15 October 2006, a span of four months.