Rousseau’s Jungle

Henri Rousseau, the French naive painter, was totally self-taught and only took up painting in his late 40s. His work was ridiculed during his lifetime and he dies penniless. Although he never left France or saw a jungle in his life his paintings depict jungles with a vivid, child like imagination. The botanical gardens in Paris were an inspiration: "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".