The Snake Charmer

Henri Rousseau worked as a toll collector on the edge of Paris, which is where the nickname Le Douanier comes from, and painted in his spare time without any training at all. The Salon critics were merciless. Younger painters were not. His jungles were painted from the Paris botanical gardens, taxidermy displays and illustrated books. He never left France, whatever he occasionally implied. The leaves are stacked in flat overlapping layers, each one drawn separately, and the effect is stranger than any observed jungle would be. Picasso bought one of his canvases from a junk shop and threw a banquet in his honour in 1908, part tribute and part joke, though the admiration was real. The Sleeping Gypsy and The Dream are the best known works. He died in 1910, still largely unsold, shortly before the avant garde decided he had been right.