“I by no means noticed such poverty as I noticed in Rousseau’s studio,” recalled the artist Max Weber, one of many first patrons of the self-taught painter Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). Having retired early from a job within the toll cubicles of Paris to pursue his dream of being an artist, Rousseau confronted fixed cash struggles. In 1907, he was embroiled in financial institution fraud and placed on trial. Defending him as a easy soul who was duped, Rousseau’s lawyer deployed his untutored work as proof of his “naivety”.
This fable of unworldly innocence was unfold after his dying by the artists, critics, sellers and collectors who championed the newbie they nicknamed “Le Douanier” (the customs officer). His repute and market have been booming by 1923, when the US collector Albert C. Barnes paid the seller Paul Guillaume 45,000 francs (plus fee) for his first Rousseau—on a par with prime works by Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso. Solely 15 years earlier, a younger Picasso had rescued a discarded Rousseau canvas from a junk store for 5 francs.
Barnes and Guillaume shaped the 2 largest collections of Rousseau’s work, with 18 and 11 work respectively. Many of those will probably be reunited for the primary time in over a century this month, as a part of Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets and techniques (19 October-22 February) on the Barnes Basis in Philadelphia. It travels subsequent yr to the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, dwelling to the Guillaume assortment.
‘Unimaginable discoveries’
“Uniting the 2 collections was the proper basis for the present,” says Nancy Ireson, the deputy director for collections and exhibitions on the Barnes Basis and the co-curator of the exhibition with Christopher Inexperienced, professor emeritus at London’s Courtauld Institute of Artwork. The undertaking was made doable by the inspiration’s 2023 courtroom case, which permitted work to be lent exterior the mounted ensembles conceived by Barnes himself. Ireson describes “an incredible alternative to create new pairings” that assist to bust a few of the outdated myths round Rousseau.
Whereas Inexperienced notes that “lots of Rousseau’s secrets and techniques won’t ever be recognized”, new conservation analysis on the Barnes work has revealed “some unbelievable discoveries”. Traces of myriad revisions counsel he tactically tailored his compositions to draw purchasers. Frugal by necessity, he reused some canvases by fully overpainting them. Rousseau “had actual ambitions to earn a dwelling from his work”, Inexperienced says. “Finally, he failed. However he made extraordinary work whereas attempting to take action.”
The present will concentrate on the artist’s seek for an viewers whereas embracing completely different themes, from the political allegory of Struggle (round 1894) to his common scenes of untamed beasts in lush jungles. These fantastical innovations—impressed by illustrated magazines and sketches on the Paris botanic backyard—have been a understanding “try and make a spectacle” on the metropolis’s open-submission salons, Ireson says. It took years earlier than mockery gave solution to real acclaim, however Rousseau collected constructive and detrimental press clippings alike. “He understood the facility of recognition,” Ireson says.
Different sections will seize the “petit bourgeois” suburban milieu during which Rousseau eked out a commerce earlier than his avant-garde admirers got here knocking. He produced portraits and landscapes for households and enterprise homeowners in his neighbourhood, offered at modest costs or bartered for skilled companies.
The curators’ aim to “carry out the nuance” of Rousseau’s workaday actuality is “to not deny the mystique”, Ireson says. “We need to have a good time the truth that in some methods he stays an enigma, however we’re providing clues as to how guests would possibly interpret him.”
The closing part, “An Enigma”, will function three large-scale work: The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), Disagreeable Shock (1899-1901) and The Snake Charmer (1907). Hovering between calm and hazard, they continue to be powerfully “open to interpretation”, Inexperienced says. Additionally they embody a tipping level in Rousseau’s fortunes, from pauper to visionary Trendy artist. Every entered an necessary assortment after his dying—The Snake Charmer going to the Louvre, the place he as soon as copied the nice masters. “In a way, they set up Rousseau’s legacy… which he would’ve been delighted with, however couldn’t have foreseen throughout his lifetime,” Ireson says.
• Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets and techniques, Barnes Basis, Philadelphia, 19 October-22 February 2026; Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 24 March-20 July 2026
