Henri le douanier rousseau biography of abraham

Henri le douanier rousseau biography of abraham: The French Post-Impressionist painter

Henri Rousseau the artist was mostly self-taught, and his work reflected his absence of formal education, with its disregard for accurate proportion, one-point perspective, and utilization of vivid, sometimes garish colors. As a consequence of these characteristics, an oeuvre filled with a feeling of mystique and strangeness emerged. Henri Rousseau was born into a poor family in Laval in northwestern France.

His father experienced long-term financial problems, accumulating enough debts to have the family home seized in Henri then enlisted as a boarder at Laval High School, where he remained until Aside from getting honors in music and sketching, he was an ordinary scholar. In , the family relocated to Angiers, where Rousseau worked as a bookkeeper for the municipal bailiff.

He evaded the conscription, but he wound up enlisting in the infantry unit to avoid embarrassment after his employers accused him of theft. His years of active service in France were unremarkable, but he frequently inflated reports of his military exploits. One of his made-up exploits involves putting down a rebellion against Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, where he would purportedly have been subjected to the tropical environment that would subsequently influence his artworks.

In , Rousseau wedded Clemence Boitard, his first wife.