The naive artist who did not study painting: Who is Henri Rousseau?

Henri Julien Felix Rousseau was born to a poor family in Laval, northwest France, on May 20, 1844. His father was a plumber and his mother, Eleonore Guyard, belonged to a military family of knights and colonels. Rousseau, who attends Laval High School, begins boarding school when his parents leave the city after his father goes into debt and their house is confiscated. In high school, he is successful enough to win awards in music and painting classes, although not in his other subjects.

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910) was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

Rousseau becomes a lawyer's clerk in 1864. Here, when some cash and a large amount of stamps are stolen, he is imprisoned for up to a month; When he leaves, he goes to the army. Although the painter says that as a musician (violin) in a military band, he was sent to Mexico to serve the Mexican Emperor Maximilian, supported by the last French Emperor Napoleon III, this is not certain, it is said to be a product of the painter's imagination. There is no documentation on this subject.

In 1868, he married for the first time, at the age of 24, Clémence Boitard, 15, the daughter of the owner of the house where he lived in Paris. The couple had six children, but only one survived.

In 1871, Rousseau got a job as a clerk at the Paris Toll Service Octroi, which imposed customs duties on goods entering the city, from which he was nicknamed Le Douanier (customs man). Rousseau does not take any painting training because he does not have the means, he trains himself. But much later he would say that he learned a few tactics from Felix Auguste Clement and Jean-Leon Gerome to improve his painting and customize his technique. Unfortunately, there is no painting from before 1880; The earliest known pictures show him working amateurishly.

Rousseau lost his first wife in 1888. He retires in 1893; Now he can devote most of his time to painting. In 1898, he made his second marriage to Josephine Noury. They have a modest life in the Plaisance neighborhood of Paris. To earn a living, he works as a violinist and solfeggio lessons, as a sales inspector for a newspaper, and as a legal adviser to the poor of the region. In the small stationery shop opened by his wife, he sells his paintings as well as portraits of his neighbors. Rousseau briefly taught art at a municipal school during this period. He lost his second wife 4 years after marriage.

Rousseau exhibits 20 of his works between 1886 and 1890 at the annual Independents exhibitions organized by the Société des Artistes Indépendants. However, it is subjected to intense criticism and ridicule. “Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet with his eyes closed,” writes a Parisian journalist.

Years later, he will tell the critic Andre Dupont with a strong sense of appreciation that Felix Auguste Clemente and Jean-Leon Gerome, whose workshops he went to, insisted that he should never change his style, that his paintings had a nature that did not belong to the century in which they lived.

Despite its apparent simplicity, Rousseau meticulously builds his forest paintings in layers, using a multitude of green tones to capture the lush exuberance of the forest. He also devises his method of depicting heavy rain by tracing strips of silver paint diagonally across the canvas, a technique inspired by the satin-like surfaces of William-Adolphe Bouguereau's paintings.

Rousseau develops a highly personal style. Because he did not learn anatomy or perspective, his portraits and landscapes are often described as childish or naive. This word, which comes from the Latin word "nativus" and the concept of naive, meaning natural, pure, unaffected, is usually used for uneducated artists.

We can list the common features of naive paintings as follows. The most decisive is time and space fiction; In naive pictures, time is uncertain. With this aspect, time offers a symbolic, universal, and portable structure. Remarkably, naive paintings can be found anywhere and anytime. Space is unreal and symbolic. Space has been created more toward the outside world, but nature and the outside world have come to the fore with the illusion, exaggeration, and deformation of reality. In naive paintings, the subject choice is usually nature. Topic repetition is the most important determinant. The subject handling shows unreal and imaginary features. The analogy phenomenon in naive painting does not include imitation of nature. Because the artist seeks nature in the world of mind and emotion rather than researching and observing nature. In this sense, the naive painter does what he imagines, not what he sees. Symbolic fiction is at the forefront of the subject selection. Color is the most important determinant in naive painting. The colors are created with exuberant, magical, and soft tonal transitions. The line often melts into the color. For this reason, the unreality that is desired to be given is often given through colors and their volatility. Colors do not emphasize reality and often lack color perspective. Colors are superficial and imaginary. In this respect, colors contain symbolic fiction.

Typical of Rousseau's paintings is the tension between botanical objectivity and the aura of enigmatic fantasy. Rousseau never actually leaves his country, having only second-hand knowledge of exotic parts of the world. His animals and plants are inspired by the magazines, photographs, and dioramas (a three-dimensional modeling of a real or fictional event or story with the help of light plays) in the Jardin des Plantes (botanical garden) in Paris.

Rousseau's second encounter with crime occurred in 1907 when he was involved in a bank fraud case. A bank teller friend sets up the plan; Rousseau will open an account with a fake name and get fake bank certificates. Crime is quickly revealed; Rousseau does not go to jail, he escapes with a fine.

Picasso buys a painting of Rousseau sold on the street and immediately meets the painter. Thus begins their long-lasting friendship. Picasso became one of the people who most supported Rousseau, his creativity, and his technique in the art world. In November 1908, Picasso held a banquet in his studio for Rousseau's acceptance in the art community, with names such as painters Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, Georges Braque, poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire and writer Gertrude Stein. After Apollinaire recited a poem on the guest of honor, Rousseau stood up to thank him, turning to Picasso, "We are both the greatest painters of our time; You will say, “You are in the Egyptian style, and I am in the modern style.” It is said that everyone who participated said this meaningful sentence for a long time. It leaves such effective traces at night; that celebration is referred to as Le Banquet Rousseau (Rousseau Celebration).

Apart from his painting, Rousseau received a diploma from the French Academy of Music in 1885 with the Clemence Waltz as an enthusiastic amateur violinist. He also wrote the plays A Visit To The 1889 World's Fair and The Revenge of a Russian Orphan.

Rousseau underwent surgery in 1910 because of gangrene of a wound on his leg, which he overlooked; He later dies of blood poisoning. Engraved on his tomb in Brancusi, Apollinaire's lines begin: "Gentle Rousseau, listen..."