Artist · 16 prints
Henri Rousseau Prints
About Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau was a French painter, born in Laval in 1844 and died in Paris in 1910. He had no formal art training and spent most of his working life as a clerk in the Paris toll office, which earned him the joking nickname "le Douanier" (the customs officer). He painted alongside his job, began showing at the Salon des Indépendants in 1886, and retired in 1893 to paint full-time.
Henri Rousseau is best known for his dreamlike jungle scenes, thick with leaves and flowers and watched by tigers, lions and monkeys, even though he never left France. He drew on visits to the Paris botanical gardens, natural-history displays and illustrated books. Critics mocked his flat, carefully outlined style for years, but younger artists admired it, and in 1908 Pablo Picasso held a famous banquet in his honour. Key works include The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), a lion standing over a sleeping woman in a moonlit desert, and The Dream (1910). He influenced naive painting and the Surrealists.
Henri Rousseau prints: reproductions of the paintings French self-taught painter Henri Rousseau made between 1886 and 1910. Works in the collection include The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), The Dream (1910), Tiger in a Tropical Storm (1891), The Snake Charmer (1907) and Tropical Forest with Monkeys (1910).
This selection concentrates on Rousseau's jungle paintings: dense leaves, flowers and tropical forests with tigers, lions, monkeys and a snake charmer, painted in many shades of green with flat, outlined shapes. It also includes his scenes of Paris and its outskirts, such as The Eiffel Tower and Carnival Evening, the allegorical War (La Guerre) and a late flower still life.
The green jungle scenes suit living rooms, bedrooms, children's rooms and plant-filled spaces, and the larger ones work well above a sofa or bed. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
