Exposed!

With this understanding of Rousseau’s ambition and character, his art becomes no accident, but a consciously considered means to achieve greatness. We can observe the deliberateness of his intentions in a letter composed in 1895: “If I have kept my naïveté, it is because Monsieur Gérôme…as well as Monsieur Clément…always told me to keep it…” (qtd. Lanchner, 35). Not only does this letter confirm the high esteem in which he held the painters of the Académie, it suggests that Rousseau’s style was a conscious effort to realize his own particular artistic vision. In fact, Rousseau demonstrates his abilities as a skilled illustrator of reality in several undated sketches.

The first of these is a straightforward copy of Delacroix’s Encounter Between a Lion and a Tiger (date unknown). Rousseau’s copy is accurate enough to confirm that he at least possessed the ability to copy in a manner that replicated the style of his role models. More significantly, Rousseau adapts another Delacroix painting, this time a watercolor entitled Lion Keeping a Serpent (1846) in his sketch Lion Reclining (date unknown). This is not merely a reproduction, but rather an original composition inspired by, and executed in the same style as its model. Here Rousseau has succeeded in emulating Delacroix’s level of realism, making use of sophisticated shading techniques, as well as accurately rendering objects in their proper perspective, countering Vallier’s claim that “[Rousseau] never managed to understand the functioning of linear perspective” (Vallier, 12). Additionally, his copy retains its verisimilitude across two remarkably dissimilar mediums, and still manages to make the work recognizably distinct from its inspiration. Suddenly, the words of Albert Sarraut, president of the Société des Amis d’Henri Rousseau, seem rather superficial: “The art of this man is naïve, certainly clumsy, even childish; it is apparently devoid of any culture and technical knowledge” (qtd Keay, 27). If Sarraut were correct, Rousseau’s fame would be through no effort of his own, but merely a product of historical circumstance. Instead, the lens that these sketches hold to Rousseau’s development and motivations reveal him to be every bit the worthy artist he wanted to be.

Rousseau himself admits to perhaps exaggerating the myth of his own artistic innocence, claiming to have composed over 200 drawings in pen and pencil prior to 1895 (Rich, 15), and records show him to have applied for a copyist’s permit at the Louvre, Luxembourg, and Versailles museums as early as 1884 (Lanchner, 91). These facts would indicate that these few sketches were not isolated occurrences, but rather an integral part of Rousseau’s development as a painter. Yet, when it came time to compose the works for which he is known today, Rousseau seemingly abandoned the conventions of Gérôme and Delacroix: the exactingly rendered detail and realism preferred by the Académie never finds its way into Rousseau’s “finished” catalogue.