French 1844-1910 Henri Rousseau Locations He was born in Laval in the Loire Valley into the family of a plumber. He attended Laval High School as a day student and then as a boarder, after his father became a debtor and his parents had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. He was mediocre in some subjects at the high school but won prizes for drawing and music. He worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army," serving for four years, starting in 1863. With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. In 1871, he was promoted to the toll collector's office in Paris as a tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art. His wife died in 1888 and he later remarried. Rousseau claimed he had "no teacher other than nature", although he admitted he had received "some advice" from two established Academic painters, Felix Auguste-Clement and Jean-Leon Gerome. Essentially he was self-taught and is considered to be a naive or primitive painter.  Related Paintings of Henri Rousseau :. | The Environs of Batignolles | View of the Fortifications | Portrait of Rousseau's Second Wife with a Lamp | In a Tropical Forest: Fight Between a Tiger and a Bull | The Banana Harvest |
Related Artists:
RUOPPOLO, Giovanni Battista
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1629-ca.1690
Pietro Vannuci called il Perugino
Citta della Pieve ca 1448-Fontignano 1523
Konrad of Soest
1370-1422 German Konrad Gallery