(1844-1910) Henri Rousseau was born in Laval, France. He retired from his job as a minor inspector in a toll office at the Customs office at age 41 to devote himself to painting. After just a year as a full-time artist, he exhibited his first painting at the Salon des Indépendants. Shortly afterward, he met some his contemporaries, including Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Camille Pissarro.

Rousseau's naïve style of painting was subjected to the ridicule of many of his peers. His technique had been dubbed le style concièrge, and he would have been barred from the Salon des Indépendants, had Edgar Degas not intervened on his behalf. Rousseau said of his paintings,

I have been told that my work is not of this century. As you will understand, I cannot now change my manner, which I have acquired as a result of obstinate toil.

A romantic in his art, Rousseau was also a romantic in his life. Broken hearted by the rejection of the woman he loved, Rousseau died of a gangrenous infection to a self-inflicted wound in 1910 at age 66. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the epitaph engraved on Rousseau's tombstone. It reads, in part:

We bring you canvas, brush and paint of ours,
During eternal leisure, radiant
As you once drew my portrait
You shall paint
The face of stars.

Henri Rousseau Prints & Posters

References:
Rousseau; edited by David Larkin, intro by Martiin Greene; (1975) Ballantine Books; New York, NY
World Book Macintosh Edition; Contributor: Nancy J. Troy, Ph.D., Research Associate, The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities