Artwork: Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!)

Artist: Henri Rousseau (Douanier)

Medium and Support: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 130 cm × 162 cm (51 1⁄8 in × 63 3⁄4 in)

Location: National Gallery, London, UK

“I had the misfortune to lose my two wives and six children, if I didn’t get up with my work, what would have been chosen by me so far.”

(The statement belongs to Henri Rousseau in 1907) “The naïve and primitive style of Henri Rousseau’s (1844-1910) work is instantly recognizable, yet in his time and for some years after his death, the artist was repeatedly ridiculed and his work deemed “childish.” He was born in Laval in the Loire Valley and raised within fairly impoverished circumstances. He spent four years in the army before moving to Paris in 1868and working as a clerk in a law office. Rousseau did not turn to art until late in his life:

his first known work, Landscape with a Watermill is dated 1879, and he did

not launch his public artistic career until 1885. Tiger in a Tropical Storm (or Surprised!) is the first of the series of jungle scenes that Rousseau painted, and was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891. The artist claimed that he had encountered such exotic jungle scenes while serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico in 1860, but in fact, he had never left France. It is more likely that his inspiration came from the botanical gardens in Paris including the jardin des Plantes. Rousseau worked from the background to the foreground layering his paint meticulously, and using an enormous range of greens to express the verdant lushness of the jungle. To achieve the slashing rain he devised a method of training thin silver strands of paint diagonally across the canvas, adding to the unusual three-dimensional effect of the work. Though derided by critics of the period, Rousseau’s work was much admired by some of his fellow artists, including Matisse, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Robert Delaunay. (TP 1001pbyd)

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Photography credit 1️⃣ZebraPhotography