Brief Biography-When I first landed in New York, I checked into my hotel and was in the Museum of Modern Art within two hours with excitement. Of course, I walked straight into a group of Chinese students milling like bees around a painting, which I could barely see; the top looked like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Unfortunately, it would have taken me another hour to begin viewing. I have always found what I refer to as the Wall of China impenetrable. It extends from the Uffizi to the Prado and now the MOMA. As usual, I turned away, but behold, to my right was a painting by one of my favourite artists, Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, without one viewer. I had it all to myself! Thank you, China, and thank you, Vincent.
Henri Rousseau began painting as a hobby c. 1880. According to himself, he was a saxophonist with a military band in Mexico from the age of eighteen; this is undoubtedly untrue; however, he did serve during the Franco-Prussian war. Rousseau married in 1869 and was to have seven children, yet only two of them survived childhood. His wife died in 1888, and he married a second time in 1899. In 1871, he worked for the Paris toll gates’ customs, which gave him the pseudonym Le Douanier.
He first exhibited his works at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in 1886. His paintings greatly amused the public, but they never put him off; he intended to paint as an academic one day. He met many of the principal artists of the day who encouraged him when not laughing at him, including Jean-Léon Gérôme. Picasso was fond of him and held a banquet celebrating his works in 1908, albeit a humorous party. The public and many art critics ridiculed Rousseau’s naive style, but this naivety made his work unique as he viewed scenes as freshly as a child sees them, without the constraints of academicism, which he yearned but could not thankfully grasp.