henri, je t'aime!

Henri Rousseau is on my mind. Love his cheerful colors, climbing greenery and fantastical landscapes. One of the many things I admire about Rousseau is that although he painted a lot of jungle scenes, he never left France. He would get inspiration from visiting various exhibitions and the greenhouses at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Such a great imagination! Unfortunately, like a lot of now-famous artists, he was not recognized for his work until after his death. Being self-taught, he was ridiculed and many critics considered his work flat and juvenile. In reality, he was at the forefront of the vanguard movement among post-impressionists, influencing many other artists, including Picasso, Matisse and others. So, that's a pretty big "face!" to those snooty critics. I was lucky to see a huge exhibition of something like 50 of his paintings in 2006 in D.C. at the National Gallery. It was amazing. Some of my favorite of his paintings are, from above, Myself, Portrait-Landscape, 1890, National Gallery, Prague, and Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest, 1905, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania, and more below:

The Dream, 1910, Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Wedding, 1904-05, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

 The Artillerymen, 1893-5
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre, 1908
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bouquet of Flowers, 1910, Tate Gallery, London

{All images by Henri Rousseau from Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris, ed. Frances Morris and Christopher Green, Abrams, New York, 2006}