"Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris".(Exhibition note)

"Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris"

National Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C.

July 16, 2006-October 15, 2006

Henri Rousseau, whose enchanting yet untutored painting produced some of the most imaginative works of the early years of the twentieth century, is the subject of a major retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The show offers visitors an opportunity to revisit forty-nine paintings, including twenty of the artist's famous jungle pictures, and helps us to understand the sources of Rousseau's vision in the popular culture of his time.

Rousseau, an unlikely figure to have become an important artist in a period when the academic establishment still dominated French painting, was born into the petit bourgeoisie in Laval. He was completely self-taught. Lacking the web of social and academic connections which often aides artistic success in the metropolis, Rousseau had to rely in part on his own ambition and native talent.

Determined to win honor and glory with the conservative academic establishment, Rousseau retired early from his job as a toll collector in order to devote himself to painting. While the official acceptance he desired never materialized, the story that did play out around him proved to be more important to the history of modern art. If Rousseau never mastered the rules of the game he aspired to play, his version of it was so fantastic that it opened up new and vital possibilities for the modernists who embraced him and his work.