Rousseau - Virgin forest at sunset. Negro attacked by a leopard

French painter, generally considered representative of naive painters. Those nostalgic for childhood, those seeking the marvelous and all those who wanted to sail far from the norms were carried away. They saw in this customs officer a ferryman, a man on the edge between reason and fantasy, between civilization and savagery.

Henri Rousseau's imaginary and stylized exoticism comes from the Jardin des Plantes, the Jardin d'Acclimatation or the botanical magazines of the time. A great solitary, an original colorist, with a summary but precise style, he greatly influenced naïve painting. In "Virgin Forest at Sunset. Negro Attacked by a Leopard" from 1910, all the shades of green of his inextricable forests, where he shows us a profusion of very detailed exotic plants, we have the impression that if man had not been devoured by the jaguar, he would have been suffocated by the vegetation.

Initially criticized for their lack of realism and their naivety, his "jungles" would later be recognized as models by all, hence this phrase from Guillaume Apollinaire during the Salon d'Automne where Rousseau exhibited "Le Rêve": "This year, no one laughs, all are unanimous: they admire."

Virgin forest at sunset. Negro attacked by a leopard, 1909
Kunstmuseum, Basel