Vente de tableaux et peintures de Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was the son of a tinsmith in Laval (Mayenne). He was a high school student, but did not finish his second year. His artistic talents were soon apparent when he won an art prize and a music prize in 1860 at the age of 16. He was called up for military service and met soldiers who were part of the French expedition to Mexico (1861-67). Legend has it that he was part of the expedition and was later inspired by the Mexican landscape to draw his own jungles. In reality, Rousseau never left France. He resigned from the army in 1868 and settled in Paris. In 1869, he married Clémence Boitard, who gave him seven children, only one of whom became a teenager.

He began painting as an amateur in the early 1870s, and in 1884 he obtained a copyist's permit from the Louvre Museum. He joined a salon, known as the Salon des Indépendants, set up in Paris into which he was introduced by the pointillist artist Paul Signac. He had his first exhibition at the salon in 1886, and continued to exhibit there every year until his death, with the exception of 1899 and 1900. The Salon des Indépendants enabled Henri Rousseau to acquire a certain notoriety in the art world. However, as he had no formal training, his work was not considered serious.

Rousseau is now recognised as a major creator, as the first naïve artist and as a precursor of the Surrealists. His paintings are exhibited in the world's greatest museums. Initially a painter of portraits and landscapes, he enjoyed painting jungles with The snake charmer and The Dream. He also painted portraits, such as Myself in 1890. He died on 2 September 1910 of gangrene in his leg.