Rousseau, Henri (1844-1910)
Portrait du père de l’artiste (Portrait of the Artist’s Father)
c.1905
Oil on canvas, 21.8 x 16 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
Henri Rousseau is one of the most representative and interesting figures in the history of modern art. He was born in Laval, France, in 1844. He moved from his provincial home in north-west France to Paris. He worked as a customs clerk, an occupation that earned him the nickname le Douanier (the customs officer), and he was closely associated with some of the most prominent figures in the canon of modern art. Le Douanier began painting after the age of forty. Entirely self-taught, his ambition was to become a painter in the tradition of the French Academy. His compositions, often fanciful and naïve, never gained commercial support or favourable reviews from the Academy.
Despite the enthusiasm with which Rousseau has been embraced and incorporated into the canon of Western art, he is a difficult figure to assimilate because he emerged independently of his contemporaries and did not belong to any school or style. However, his work – depicting jungles, exotic animals and dreamlike fantasies – won the approval of a younger generation of Parisian artists in the early twentieth century, such as Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi and Vassily Kandinsky. The Surrealists were particularly fascinated by Rousseau‘s work. The Parisian avant-garde was captivated at the turn of the century by so-called “primitive” or naïve art. The Surrealists’ interest in Rousseau is somewhat ironic: they were attracted by his clumsy realism, his flatness and his strange compositions, which were largely attributable to his lack of training.
Portrait du père de l’artiste depicts the artist’s father suspended in a blue sky, emerging from a cushion of white clouds. Julien Rousseau, the subject of the portrait, was a tin merchant and ironmonger in the artist’s small hometown. There are no clues in the portrait to the sitter’s occupation, but Rousseau’s esteem for his father is highlighted. His respect and love for him is made evident by his choice to paint him in profile – a type of portrait with a long history, often associated with the image of rulers and highly influential people. Rousseau further elevates his father by placing him in front of a seemingly endless sky. The image is not unique in the artist’s oeuvre. Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, completed around 1905, have a similar compositional scheme.
In the MNBA work, Le Douanier maintains his taste for imaginative compositions, juxtaposing a traditional portrait against a background of a sky with large clouds. Perhaps best known for his jungle scenes and fantastic landscapes, Rousseau’s portraits, especially those of his family and close friends, form an important and interesting part of his oeuvre. This painting ranks among the works in Rousseau’s output that are termed “portrait-landscape,” a form that the artist claimed to have invented. The portraits and group scenes such as Portrait du père de l’artiste are diminutive in size and, unlike the larger, more fantastic canvases, illustrate Rousseau’s ingenuity in handling human figures that often appear bulky and clumsy. (Abigail Winograd | MNBA)