“The Dream” by Henri Rousseau (c. 1910)

Presentation by Ash Donnelly

“The Dream” (1910) Henri Rousseau“Self Portrait of the Artist with a Lamp” (1903)

By Henri Rousseau

Biography of Henri Rousseau• Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (May

21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French Post Impressionist painter, well known for his primitive style of representation.

• Henri Rousseau was born in Laval, France in 1844. As a boy he worked for his father’s plumbing business but then went on study law.

• He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

The Jungle Paintings• His best known paintings depict jungle

scenes, even though he never left France or saw a jungle in person. Illustrated books, parks, and botanical garden were his main inspirations, as well as tableaux of taxidermied wild animals.

• His style was criticized during his lifetime for being of a ‘primitive’ or ‘naïve’ manner.

• He had also met soldiers during his term of service who had survived the French expedition to Mexico, and he listened to their stories of the subtropical country they had encountered.

• To the critic Arsène Alexandre, he described his frequent visits to the Paris botanical garden Jardin des Plantes: "When I go into the glass houses and I see the strange plants of exotic lands, it seems to me that I enter into a dream."

“Surprised” (1891) Henri Rousseau

The Subjects of “The Dream” (1910)

• Subject matter wise, the piece features a nude female figure lounging on a red couch in the lower left hand corner. She is extending her hand toward the center of the picture plane, creating both a sense of motion and a focal point within the work. Different types of bushes and trees, along with a variety of blue and lavender flowers, adorn the entire implied environment. At first guess, this appears to be a sort of tropical, or maybe even an African jungle climate. The couch seems out of place, but combines the concept of nature- the mysterious and the exotic, with a sense of familiarity and comfort. Several animals peek out from the dense layers of foliage, including two lions, an elephant, the orange snakelike tail of an unidentified creature, a perching orange-bellied bird, and in the upper left hand corner, a golden-winged bird in flight. Near the center of the painting is an onyx-skinned woman playing a flute. She wears no clothing other than a deliberately emphasized skirt, which has horizontal blue, red, maroon, gold and gray stripes. A full moon shines brightly over a tree bearing orange-like fruits which glisten in the moon's radiance. These components work together to instill an exotic essence, and altogether adds to a strong sense of euphoria and fertility.

“The Dream” (1910) Henri Rousseau

• The painting was first unveiled at the Salon des Independants, and was originally displayed with a poem:

"Yadwigha, falling into sweet sleepheard in a lovely dreamthe sound of a musetteplayed by a kind enchanter.While the moon shoneon the flowers, the verdant trees,the wild snakes lent an earto the instrument's gay airs."

“The Dream” (1910) Museum Visit #1

• The composition is separated by an overlapping of curved linear elements, which compose the subject's foliage.

• Utilizes mostly cool colors, such as greens, grays and blues, with the other more vibrating primary color hues for emphasis in specific areas.

• Rousseau spends some time mechanically blending his colors to appear flat, but leaves the integrity of the brush and paint visible as well. This is particularly notable in such as places as the lion's fur, which has distinguished scrapes from the brushstrokes to imply the texture and material.

“The Dream” (1910) Henri Rousseau

Second Museum Visit• The bold, graphic painting style is almost juvenile or primitive in a way, as

Rousseau is less concerned with the realism of his produced forms than many of the other painters during his era. Instead, Rousseau focuses his attention on his physical use of line and color, with a great deal of time spent developing these conceptual sensations through visual scaffolding. In this sense (of connecting color to specific concepts/emotions), he is very much characteristic of the post-Impressionistic painters.

• I've noticed the left hand lounging female figure is very different from a modern sense of sexuality. The proportions are distorted, her extended arm is relatively short and stocky for the torso. Perhaps each animal represents a particular emotion or character within the narrative. The orange-bellied bird is calm and innocent, while the golden-winged bird appears similarly innocent but flocks off with poetic, maybe even stoic, gesture. The lions appear animalistic, wild, and manic. The elephant is clearly calm, but peers sternly from the shadows, perhaps with great, but accepted, fear of the others in the jungle. Innocence, fear, and the mania of the predator are personified through Rousseau's animal actors in his scene, but are also major concepts of animal behaviors.

Third Museum Visit and Research• One of the questions I find myself asking is what role does this nude woman

play in relation to the couch and the jungle? After some researching, I discovered that Rousseau had commented on this to a critic right before his death.

• "The woman sleeping on this sofa dreams that she is transported into the middle of the forest, hearing the charmer's pipe," Rousseau had explained.

• This woman may even be in close relation to Rousseau himself- she is a European woman of some sort, as Roussaeu was a Parisian. But it is clear she dreams of the tropics; she is seduced, and in love with the jungle. This gives the mystified, juxtaposed image a new element- the power of narrative within art work. Rousseau's true iconography seems to not only lie within his graphic style, but also within the story the painting depicts. The woman enters a new world, from the comfort of unconsciousness on her own couch.

Other ‘Jungle Paintings’ by Rousseau

“Scout Attacked By A Tiger” (1904)

“Jungle Sunset” (1910)

“Woman Walking In An Exotic Forest” (1905)

“Exotic Landscape” (1910)