Ben Shechet, Princeton Class of 2009
The paintings of Henri Rousseau present a singular puzzle on the timeline of art history. He is claimed by no school, yet to him are attributed characteristics of every modern style from Fauvism to Surrealism to Dada. Rousseau’s works, such as the iconic The Sleeping Gypsy (1897) seem to fit into no particular niche. Rousseau described this painting with an understated humility in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Laval:
A wandering negress, playing the mandolin, with her jar beside her (vase containing drinking water), sleeps deeply worn out by fatigue. A lion wanders by, detects her and doesn’t devour her. There is an effect of moonlight, very poetic. The scene takes place in a completely arid desert. The gipsy is dressed in oriental fashion.” (qtd Alley 45)
This description is certainly accurate, but fails to convey the atmosphere created by the painting, and does little to apprehend the incredible strangeness and uniqueness of Rousseau’s style. His figures--the lion, the gypsy and her guitar--even the eerily bright moon overhead--are flattened to the canvas, with no thought to rendering perspective accurately. His palette is sumptuous, but not to the point of excess: the viewer instead feels lulled into a surreal slumber, like the gypsy herself, by the soft glow that suffuses the scene. His style is neither here nor there, neither naturalistic nor full of excited action in the vein of the Romantics or Realists of the French Academie, nor inducing the momentary, fleeting sensations of color and light characteristic of the newly popular Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements. This strange lack of stylistic connection to his contemporaries has prompted Werner Schmalenbach to assert that “[Rousseau] remains…a unique case in art history” (Schmalenbach, 13). Similarly, Carolyn Keay, an art critic whose area of focus stretches from the Romantics to the Symbolists, writes that “Rousseau of course was not so much breaking with tradition, as completely unaware of any tradition” (Keay, 25). With such comments, both Keay and Schmalenbach take Rousseau’s departure from the artistic movements of the day—both Academic and Impressionistic—as evidence to set Rousseau entirely apart from the chronology of art. These claims have led to the classification of Rousseau as a “naïve” or “primitive” artist: one whose compositions stem from no artistic schooling, but instead from within the artists’ own psyche.
But is this really true? At first glance, Rousseau would seem to fit this description perfectly. In a letter to the publishers of a biographical volume on artists of the period, Rousseau wrote of himself, “It was accordingly not until 1885 that he made his debut in Art after many disappointments, alone and without any master but nature and some advice from Gérôme and Clément” (qtd. Keay 12). With this statement as well as others like it, Rousseau effectively declaimed any significant influence from previous movements or teachers—the fact that he intended this passage to be repeated verbatim in a biography is interesting as well. It would appear that Rousseau himself sought to affirm his classification as a naïve painter, and for the most part his statement is a truthful record: born in 1844, Rousseau was raised in a household of modest means, served an undistinguished tour of duty in the French infantry—despite the biographer Guillaume Apollinaire’s claims to the contrary, there is no record indicating that he ever even left France as a soldier––and in 1869 took a job as a clerk in a lawyer’s office (hence his nickname “Le Douanier,” or “the customs-clerk”). His earliest works reach back only to 1877, confirming his assertion that he lacked formal artistic training in any capacity. At this time, he came into contact with the painter Félix Clément through literal, physical proximity, as they were neighbors in Paris, and the sociable Clément introduced Rousseau to Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Léon Bonnat, and Jean-Léon Gérôme, all respected members of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts (Shattuck, 11-12).Such exposure suggests that Rousseau certainly idolized especially Gérôme, mentioning his influence in every autobiographical statement on record today (Vallier, 21), and that he held the Academic masters in the highest possible regard. But more importantly, Rousseau’s style was not an outgrowth of technical shortcomings—a convenient explanation, to be sure, but an inaccurate one. Even though Götz Adriani proclaims this supposed incompetence to be a fortuitous failure on Rousseau’s part-- “Luckily, our customs officer lacked the training to achieve this lofty goal,”(Adriani, 19)¬¬- and Schmalenbach is even more extreme in his dismissal of Rousseau’s technique, labeling the dichotomy of idealism and reality in Rousseau’s catalogue a “great, fundamental self-deception” (Schmalenbach, 13)--these judgements presume too much. First, they assume that Rousseau’s goal was indeed to emulate, and more importantly replicate the Academic style, and second, that his claims to this effect were merely deluded. Instead, Rousseau’s aesthetic approach was never intended to imitate Academic art—his painting was a conscious effort to become an original and respected artist in his own right.
The Exhibit
Naive, Or a Convincing Pretender?
Sublime and Feral
Exposed!
Surprising Indeed...
A Leap Toward Greatness
...And a Return to Sleep
Works Cited
About the Author
The Gallery
Biography
Visions of the Exotic
The Jungles of Paris
Lions, Lions Everywhere
Above, right: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897. Museum of Modern Art: New York
