Henri Rousseau Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)
Henri, from Laval, France, and dubbed “Le Douanier” (customs officer) after his occupation found primitive art late in life. He at once mastered a landscape formula, and beginning after 1904 created more than twenty large fanatistic jungle paintings. They evidence his mastery of a formal language, oblivious of convention, that owes nothing to traditional methods. The images, smooth, vivid, and clearly defined, are flat and fluid against dense but dimensionless greenery, and although unreal and extraordinary, are rendered in meticulous botanical detail.
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