Henri Rousseau

Happy Birthday Henri Rousseau!! You will have to excuse my tardiness, but it is the first day of my retirement and I have been taking it EASY...French painter, born in 1844, Rousseau served in the military and then worked in the Paris Custom's Office before retiring to focus full time on his art in 1893. Considered a Post-Impressionist, he painted in a primitive style intriguing to the Surrealists. Rousseau's masterpiece is the Sleeping Gypsy (1897), pictured here. He described it 's subject as a "wandering Negress overcome by fatigue". Fortunately the lion who happens by does not devour her! The crystal sky casts a haunting light over the scene.