Explore the Enchanted World of Henri Rousseau: An Artistic Odyssey Through the Jungle of Imagination

hello my name is Paul Priestley welcome to artists in school comm the home of art history for young people and the interested amateurs today I'm going to be telling you 10 really fascinating facts about the French artist already Russa he was a naive painter he had no training at all I was totally self-taught base of fascinating character and his paintings are charming so let's get started and have a look fact number one Orry Russo was born in Laval in northern France in 1844 this place here it's beautiful he went to Laval High School and he was quite good at drawing but not much good at anything else when he left school he worked for a solicitor but one day with a group of friends he stole a small amount of money and some stamps to avoid prison he applied to join the army in 1863 but unfortunately before he could get into the army he did have to serve one month in prison fact number 2 ory rusul exaggerates a great deal for example he claims to have served with the French army in Mexico and this is where he said he got his inspiration for his jungle paintings but there is no evidence from his army records that he ever left France he also said that the animals that he draws in his pictures were all drawn when he was in Mexico but it seems that he spent a lot of time at the zoo in Paris and copying animals from books fact number three Rousseau leaves the army on compassionate grounds in 1868 his father has died so he wants to look after his widowed mother they moved to Paris and it's here that he meets Clemens batard in 1869 and they get married and in 1871 he gets a job as a tax collector on the gates of Paris collecting money from people bringing goods into Paris fact number four he claims that he didn't start painting until 1886 when he was 42 years old the evidence shows that he was copying paintings in the Louvre in Paris at least two years earlier he's totally self-taught he's never been to art college or at any artlessness this is why his work looks so naive and yet so charming fact number five in 1885 Rousseau exhibits his first pictures at a Sunday refused this is for paintings which have been rejected from the main salon in Paris an exhibition which takes place every year you'll notice the paintings have quite a few technical problems with them things are too big or not in the right space but they have a naive charm about them and that's what makes them really interesting to look at fact number 6 this painting called surprise which is in the National Gallery in London you'll notice the tiger has been copied from a book we can see with all of Rousseau's drawings of and paintings of animals that they're always drawn and painted side because that is so much easier to do than to paint them at different angles you'll also notice if you look very carefully at the Tigers teeth that all the teeth are the same size maybe have difficulty reading the image from the picture because he has no canine teeth this tiger you'll also notice the tiger is standing on the grass but the grass isn't bending you'll see here must be very strong grass you'll also notice as well he'd been to the Botanical Gardens in Paris he'd never been to a jungle but he knew that plants grew big in the jungle so he paints all the grass and the plants in this painting big he exaggerated s-- them some of these are house plants which have simply been exaggerated it's really interesting just new fact number seven in this painting called Scout attacked by the tiger you'll notice Rousseau's use the same ideas again you'll notice how large the grass is you notice the patterns it creates nice simple shapes you notice how a small amount of grass fields a big area of the picture you'll also notice that the horse on which the Scout is sitting he's much smaller than the grass but the interesting thing about the painting is the tiger because we've seen the tiger before this is the tiger that appeared in the painting surprise if you look here carefully can you see what he's done he's taken the mirror image of that drawing he probably had the original drawing of the surprise tiger and turned it over and he's used it again clever fact number eight in this painting called all juniors cart this is a painting of the his butcher the old this man some money because he couldn't pay for his sausages and his meat so they agreed that our butcher agreed that he would paint a picture of his family instead so Rousseau set about painting the picture but he have a few problems you see he painted the figures at the top here and there's a butcher's wife and you can see the door from their little dog and suchlike all sitting there in the cart but you'll notice down at the bottom here the pavement I think what he did was to paint the pavement in first and then when he got to painting the wheel and the dog suddenly realized that the payment was in the wrong places paint another payment there and that has resulted in the dog being underneath the cart and the other dog looks a little bit too small and have you noticed that the piebald horse is got very thin feminine legs it looks a bit strange but the most interesting thing is the man driving the cart because when the butcher saw the painting he turned to Rousseau and said what have you done Rousseau thought he was referring to the mistakes he made but he wasn't the butcher wanted to know why he'd painted Rousseau had painted himself driving the cart why have you put yourself in the picture II said guru said well it's because I'm an important artist fact number nine in 1908 Picasso who was then 27 and an up-and-coming artist invited Rousseau to his studio in the Battle of wha in Paris he was going to present him with a medal for being a great artist Rousseau arrived and it was full of Picasso's friends they would all laugh finger and shouting some were drunk they're all having a good time Picasso said Shh the crowd I am going to present Rousseau with a medal he declared and he brought out metal guru so stood there in his nice new suit the medal Picasso had made himself it was this big a made of cardboard and on it he had written the world's greatest artist and hung it around Russo's neck everybody burst out laughing but Rousseau didn't realize they were ridiculing him he walked over to Picasso and put his arm around Picasso's neck and said to the crowd we are the two greatest artists of our time you paint in the old-fashioned Egyptian style I paint in the modern style fact number 10 in 1910 Rousseau died he was a pauper in fact he was penniless so he was buried in a pauper's grave which means that thickness in the corner of a graveyard in the church which has no headstones so he would have been forgotten about in fact only seven people appeared at his funeral that would have been the end of the story but in 1912 his body was reinterred into a proper grave in one of the biggest cemeteries in Paris and it was paid for by his friends including Picasso and as you can see here his gravestone now had a poem engraved on it by Apollinaire a great poet that would have been the end of the story but not quite because in 1947 his body was moved again and this time he was reburied in Laval in north and France where he was born and he was buried in the park in Laval so if you happen to be in Laval you can go and visit his grave today thank you for watching artists in school corn I hope you enjoyed the video and learned lots about Olly Rousseau if you have perhaps you could give the video a like that would be much appreciated and also if you could subscribe to my channel that will be even better that we wonderful thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Art History School

Views: 122,931

Keywords: Henri Rousseau famous paintings, henri rousseau tiger, jungle paintings, Henri Rousseau, Henri Rousseau French artist, naive painter, French artist, Scout attacked by a Tiger painting, Henri Rousseau art work, Paris, Salon des Refuses, self-taught, Henri Rousseau biography, Old Junier's cart painting, art history, tax collector, Rousseau, Surprised, modern art, art history study, le douanier, french art, henri rousseau jungle paintings, tiger in a tropical storm, the dream

Id: 0DSCLkhE4xw

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2017