Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest
Henri Rousseau
HENRI ROUSSEAU, 1905. OIL ON CANVAS.
It was Rousseau’s lack of training that allowed his genius to flourish. His unfamiliarity with the technical skills and historical knowledge, that those dominating the avant-garde had, set him apart and gave him the space to rise above them all and establish himself as one of the leading artistic figures of the post-impressionist movement. Working as a tax collector until he was 49, Rousseau retired from his lifetime job and began to work as an artist full time. He was ridiculed by critics for his naïve style, for the uncanny sense of strangeness that pervaded his work, it’s imperfections, formal idiosyncrasies and disarming scale marked down to inability rather than genius. It was Picasso, who saw a painting of Rosseau’s offered by a street seller as a used canvas to paint over, who realised that though the style was naïve, it was the world who was behind. His childish style would go on to influence a new world of avant-garde painting, spurring figures of the 20th century to try and paint like a child, or more accurately, paint in the way that was so innate to Rousseau.