artst.org | henri rousseau | Higher Resolution Gallery

Henri Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner . He is also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer) after his place of employment. Ridiculed during his life, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseau's work exerted an "extensive influence ... on several generations of vanguard artists, starting with Picasso and including Léger, Beckmann and the Surrealists".