Here he found a one-room studio where he was surrounded by his art. He settled in the Plaisance section of Paris a poor working-class neighborhood behind Montparnasse. He noted that 'my superiors at the tollgate used to assign me to less demanding duties so that I would find it easier to work.' At age forty-nine, Rousseau retired from the customs service to become a full-time artist. Gauguin had journeyed to the South Seas in search of primitive innocence Rousseau was a primitive without leaving Paris – an untrained amateur painter who held a post as a customs collector hence the sobriquet, le douanier meaning The Customs Man.įrom his stations at the toll gates at the Auteuil Embankment and the Vanves Gate, Rousseau observed the world around him and filled numerous notebooks with drawings. The mind's eye of Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) occupied a different but equally powerful world of personal fantasy. Written by Rousseau on the frame of the painting. Mostly just my own interpretations, based on some memories of an art history class taken quite a while ago. Similarly the jungle vegetation present in his other paintings were what happened to be flourishing in Paris greenhouses. Not actually having seen a real lion, he probably had worked out that that's how its' mane worked. Pseudo_Intellectual says re The Sleeping Gypsy : It would be perhaps worth mentioning that Rousseau's fantastic elements were not always so intentional as an innocent result of the fact that he drew much of his source material from catalogues and grainy print reproductions of photographs. I can only say that for a work of art to move someone like me, a lunkhead who usually just doesn't get it, is an accomplishment indeed. I cannot explain the wonder and happiness I feel when I see this painting. He seems just as curious of the gypsy as we are of him. But, just as in a child's mind, it adds only a flair of excitement and mystery, not fear. In this setting, the lion, known as the king of the jungle, a predator among predators, exists as an abstraction of danger. All these inconsistencies point to the fact that it is not meant to be real, that it is a dream. Why does she carry water but not food? How did she travel such long way without it, in an area clearly devoid of life? And why, instead of bringing food, does she bring a mandolin, of all things? Why is she so content?

Lying by the gypsy is a water jug and a mandolin, but that is all.

She sleeps in a desert, but right behind her, the ocean (a river?) can be seen, and behind that, a mountain range. The setting of this painting is both everywhere and nowhere.Rather than starting at the head and flowing backward, its roots lie way back by the the forepaws. The lion's hair is meticulously drawn strand by strand, but it grows the wrong way.It was only after studying it further that I realized how apt that comparison was: both embody a perfect image of childhood fantasy, with its strange mix of violence and innocence.ĭespite its very simple appearance, there is much that is not quite right with this painting (including the smiling moon): When I first looked at The Sleeping Gypsy, my first thought was that it reminded me of an old children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. And if you look at it carefully, you'll see it seems to have a face, and it's smiling. I think it has that vacant expression most clearly seen in the eyes of a stuffed animal. His tail points up at an angle, and his eye.I've heard it described as being transfixed, or hypnotic. Meanwhile, a lion stands above her, his mouth right by her shoulder-But despite this he seems to be completely unthreatening. She wears an expression of utter contentment. She keeps one hand tucked in her dress for warmth, and clutches a walking stick in the other. A young gypsy, decked out in a striped dress of many colors, sleeps in the sand of a desert.

Pale moon gypsy