Henri Rousseau, called le Douanier because of his early career with the French customs service, is one of the most important, and fascinating and least studied of late nineteenth-century artists. His determined and unapologetic primitivism distanced his work from that of most of his contemporaries, but he was widely admired by Picasso, Apollinaire, and Kandinsky and is now seen as one of the pioneers of the modern movement. This beautiful book offers a detailed portrait of Rousseau's life and career as well as sensitive interpretations of his unusual, individualistic art.

Götz Adriani tells Rousseau's strange life story: his petty bourgeois background, his attempts to establish himself as an independent artist after leaving the customs office, and his reaction to the derision with which his art was greeted in his own time. Adriani discusses the paradox that Rousseau had reactionary views about art and politics but was taken up by the French avant-garde. He describes Rousseau's particular brand of visual and conceptual realism and the way he set the exotic animals, figures, and plants of his dreams against the bland background of the Parisian suburbs. He explains Rousseau's contact with Alfred Jarry, Apollinaire, Picasso, and other artists of the Parisian avant- garde. Finally, he examines a selection of little-known and well-known paintings, provides details about their subjects, provenance, and reception, and shows how they influenced other artists.