Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector. Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth21 May 1844
CityLaval, France
CountryFrance
Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.
We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)
Hatred as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.
Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.
The more humanity owes the poor man, the more society denies him.
The interest and the feelings are not due to colors; the lines of a painting that move us move us even more in a print.
Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.
Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.
The universe was born restless and has never since been still.
The first man to fence in a piece of land, saying "this is mine" and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
Cities are the sinks of the human race.
I felt before I thought
God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.
It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good.