Rousseau: A Brief Biography

The air of mystery that seems to surround the life of Henri Rousseau is perhaps undeserved—more attributable to oft-repeated misinformation than an actual lack of details. In actuality, the circumstances of Rousseau’s birth and life are in no way difficult to ascertain. Born May 21, 1844 in the town of Laval, his was a family of modest means. His father was a tinsmith, whose propensity for incurring debts led to frequent migrations by his family, including the young Henri. As a result of these frequent movements, Rousseau became a boarding student at the Lycee of Laval, where Certigny writes, “An average student, he passed his exams and won a few prizes, including one in vocal music, and one in drawing” (Certigny, 28). In 1863 Rousseau, then nineteen years old, was arrested for a series of petty thefts that took place in the office of an attorney for whom he was working. In order to avoid a significant jail sentence, Rousseau elected to join the French army, serving for an undistinguished four years. Though his biographer, Guillaume Appollinaire, claimed that Rousseau actually traveled to Mexico with the army (perhaps providing an inspiration for his jungle paintings), no such journey ever occurred (Shattuck, 11).

Instead, following his discharge in 1868, Rousseau married a fifteen-year-old cabinet-maker’s daughter and settled down in Paris, finding work as an employee of the Paris Municipal Toll Service. (thus, the moniker “Le Douanier” is something of a misnomer; the correct term for a toll worker was a gabelou.) It was during this period that Rousseau was finally afforded the leisure to paint—his earliest works date back to 1877. However, it was not until 1886, when the Salon des Independants organized an unjuried exhibition that Rousseau was finally able to showcase his efforts. He sent four paintings to the first Salon, and exhibited there annually thereafter (Vallier, 34). Surprisingly, these early exhibitions were received rather favorably; Rousseau’s journal of article clippings and reviews feature such descriptions as “curious,” “sincere,” and in one case the assertion that “the public has not yet reached the level of this genre” (Shattuck, 14). By 1894, however, he had begun to draw sufficient attention that his unorthodox style elicited significant and harsh criticism.

1894 was also the year Rousseau elected to retire, inflicting upon himself a severe degree of poverty in order to more ardently pursue his painting career. By 1905, his stubborn insistence in maintaining his own visual style was winning over audiences, and Rousseau was finding new support among the avant-garde Salon d’Automne, whose members included Matisse, Derain, Braque, and Roualt. His paintings began to sell as well—though not for very much. Flushed with success, he began to hold frequent salons of his own, to which such luminaries as Picasso and Delaunay often paid visits. Despite this apparent good fortune, it seems as though nothing could ever truly go well for Rousseau. In 1907 he was made an unwitting accomplice in an embezzlement scheme, and although he was released, the ignonimity it produced never quite left him during his lifetime. In 1910 he cut himself on the leg, and soon after was stricken with severe blood poisoning. His only visitor in the hospital was the German art dealer Wilhelm Uhde, who had become a devoted friend over the years. Nevertheless, Rousseau died September 4, 1910, and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Paris. A year later Robert Delaunay paid for his body to be moved to a more respectable plot, commemorated by a tombstone inscribed by the sculptor Brancusi:

We salute you
Gentle Rousseau you hear us
Delaunay his wife Monsieur Queval and I
Let our baggage through free at heaven’s gate
we shall bring you brushes, paints, and canvas
So that you can devote your sacred leisure in the light of truth
To painting the way you did my portrait
The face of the stars.

Above, left: Henri Rousseau, Myself: Self-Portrait. 1889-90. Narodnie Gallery: Prague.