Henri Rousseau Oil Painting Reproductions

About Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Felix Rousseau, 1844 to 1910, was a French post-Impressionist painter who worked in the Naive or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by 49 he had retired from the job to work on his art full-time. Rousseau's late start explains most of the style: he was self-taught, he came out of the working class, and his rise challenged the established art world and helped open the door for naive and outsider art.

The jungle is what he is chiefly known for, and it starts with one picture. Tiger in a Tropical Storm, also titled Surprised!, is an 1891 oil-on-canvas painting of a tiger lit by a flash of lightning, preparing to pounce on its prey in the middle of a raging gale, and it was the first of the jungle paintings. The Sleeping Gypsy followed in 1897, an oil on canvas by the French Naive artist, a fantastical scene of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, donated by Olga Guggenheim in 1939, and in the museum it hangs next to van Gogh's famous 1889 painting The Starry Night.

Series and periods

Rousseau's titles fall into a handful of groups, and the green interiors are the group most people come for. The rest of his output is quieter, and the two halves sit side by side in the same list, which is the argument for reading this page before you pick a title.

• The jungle pictures: the exotic foliage, the big cats and the flat green wall of forest, the group he is chiefly known for and the most opened part of this collection. Titles here: Tiger in a Tropical Storm, The Dream, The Monkeys in the Jungle, Jungle with Lion, Apes in the Orange Grove, The Tiger Hunt.
• The moonlit pictures: the two night scenes, where the same foliage goes dark and a single figure lies or stands inside it, and the pair to compare if you want one picture for a room that is lit low. Titles here: The Sleeping Gypsy, The Snake Charmer.
• The two on the list of 100: the 1891 storm picture and the 1897 moonlit one, the two titles of his that sit on our reading of the best known paintings in art history. Titles here: Tiger in a Tropical Storm, The Sleeping Gypsy.
• Animals in the fight: the hunting and attack subjects, where the calm of the leaves breaks and the picture turns into an action. Titles here: The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, The Repast of the Lion, Jaguar Attacking a Horse, Black Man Attacked by a Jaguar.
• The river and the edge of town: the mills, the bridges and the banks, painted a long way from any jungle and rarely the reason people arrive here. Titles here: The Mill at Alfor, View of the Ile Saint Louis, View of the Bridge at Sevres, Landscape on the Banks of the Bievre.
• People out of doors: the wedding group, the ball game and the afternoon in the park, his figures at their most everyday and the clearest place to see what naive drawing does to a face. Titles here: The Wedding Party, The Football Players, Walking in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont.
• Flowers and the cat: the domestic end of the list, a still life and a house animal, both of them small in scale and easy to place. Titles here: Bouquet of Flowers, The Tabby.

Most famous works

These are the works by Henri Rousseau people ask for most here, ordered by the traffic each one draws and by what actually sells. Each title opens its own page, where you choose the size and decide on a frame, and every one of them is new work in oil, made after Rousseau to order. No two hands read a brushstroke the same way, which is why a hand-painted piece is never a facsimile and never pretends to be one.

• Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!): an 1891 oil painting, the first of the jungle pictures for which he is chiefly known. A tiger, lit by a flash of lightning, is about to pounce on its prey in the middle of a raging gale, and this is one of the two titles of his on our list of the 100 most famous. It is also the most opened page in this collection, which is what usually happens when an image is both strange and easy to remember
• The Sleeping Gypsy: an 1897 oil on canvas by the French Naive artist, a fantastical scene of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night. It has been at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since Olga Guggenheim donated it in 1939, and in the museum it hangs next to The Starry Night, which is the plainest measure of the company it keeps. Nobody is selling the original, so a new oil after it is the only way to put the scene on a wall
• The Dream: the foliage at its largest and strangest, a figure on a couch set among the leaves with animals watching from behind them. It is one of the two best selling titles here, and the one most people picture when they hear the name. Ordered large, the plants do what they were meant to do, and Rousseau's sense of scale stops looking like an error
• The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope: the title says the whole action, and the picture gives that action a stage of exotic leaves. It is first on the best selling list here, ahead of every jungle piece with no fight in it
• The Snake Charmer: a dark figure playing at the water's edge with snakes around her, the moonlit half of the group. If you want one night piece rather than one daylight piece, this is the alternative to the 1897 gypsy, and it holds a large size as well as anything on the list
• The Repast of the Lion: the animal at its meal in the leaves, given the same flat attention as the plants around it. Nothing in the picture is hurried, which is the odd part of a subject like this one
• Jungle with Lion: the plainest title in the group and a fair description of the picture: one animal set in a wall of green, with the plants holding most of the surface. It is the simplest way into the group for anyone who finds The Dream too busy
• The Monkeys in the Jungle: monkeys among the branches, one of the most opened pages in this collection and the friendliest of the subjects here. It is what people choose for a room where a hunting scene would be too much, a child's room included
• Apes in the Orange Grove: apes among the orange trees, the fruit reading as bright as the animals. Both the traffic and the orders put it high on the list, and it is the natural pair for the monkeys if you want two pictures rather than one
• The Tiger Hunt: the hunt rather than the hunted, with the tiger again at the center of it and the figures closing in from the sides. The pattern of leaves carries as much of the surface as the action does
• Jaguar Attacking a Horse: a jaguar on a horse in the undergrowth, an attack subject from the same exotic world as the tigers, and one of the pages that draws steady traffic here
• Black Man Attacked by a Jaguar: another jaguar subject, and one of the pages visitors open most often here
• The Wedding Party: a wedding group posed the way a photographer would pose it, faces frontal and flat, the whole party stacked among the trees. It is the picture people cite when they call the style naive, and the one to take if you want that argument hanging in a room where people talk
• The Football Players: four players in striped kit, an early picture of the game and unlike anything else on this list. It is the only match in progress in the whole collection, and the one title here that reads as funny rather than strange
• Walking in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont: figures walking in a public park, the trees given the same care as any foliage he invented, and one of the best selling pieces outside the green group. It is also the title that shows how little difference he made between a park and a forest
• The Tabby: a house cat, the domestic cousin of his big cats, and the piece to take if you want something small. It asks for no wall of its own, which the hunting subjects certainly do
• Bouquet of Flowers: a still life of cut flowers in a vase, the quiet end of his output and proof that the same hand worked at close range as well as across a wall of green. It is the one title here that would pass unnoticed in a room full of other painters
• The Mill at Alfor: a mill by the water, one of the scenes he took from the world in front of him rather than out of his head, and an easy piece to live with
• View of the Ile Saint Louis from the Quai Henri IV: a study rather than a finished piece, the river and the island across it, worked at the scale a study usually is and the closest thing here to seeing his hand at work
• View of the Bridge at Sevres: the bridge with the hills at Clamart, St. Cloud and Bellevue behind it, the longest title on the list and one of the widest views in it
• Landscape on the Banks of the Bievre at Becetre: a landscape on a small river bank, the kind of ordinary ground his green interiors are usually contrasted with, and a good first Rousseau for a room that already has enough color in it. If you want the hand without the drama, start here

Browse by subject

Rousseau's subjects run through other collections of ours, and each one is a different door into the same painter, so if the jungle is not what you want there is still a way in.

• Post-Impressionism: 2,226 works, the mainly French movement that ran from the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 to the birth of Fauvism around 1905, a reaction against the Impressionist concern with the naturalistic depiction of light and color, with Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Seurat as its principal artists. Rousseau is named as a post-Impressionist painter, and this is where his titles sit with the rest of the movement, which ran from the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 to the birth of Fauvism around 1905 and holds Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Seurat as its principal artists.
• Animal paintings: 1,819 canvases, the work of painters who specialize in the portrayal of animals. The big cats, the apes and the jaguars, gathered by the animal rather than by the painter, next to artists who specialized in nothing else and painted the same creatures from a cage or a field instead of from imagination.
• Tree paintings: 4,858 titles, The foliage that fills his exotic group, next to the trees of artists who worked from the forest in front of them instead of out of a hothouse and a picture book.
• Cat paintings: 147 pieces, The Tabby, and the small cats of every other name we paint in oil, which is a larger list than most people expect.
• Landscape paintings: 8,004 paintings, the genre in which the main subject is a wide view of natural scenery, mountains, valleys, rivers, trees and forests, with sky almost always in the view and weather often an element of the composition. The river scenes, the mill and the Bievre bank, the part of Rousseau's output with nothing exotic in it at all, sitting with landscape painting from every other name we reproduce in oil.
• The 100 most famous paintings of all time: 2 canvases by Rousseau sit on this list, our reading of the best known paintings in art history, the 1891 storm and the 1897 moonlit night.

The full list of painters we reproduce in oil is on the artist index.

How each reproduction is painted

Nothing here is stock. When you order, an artist paints that title in oil on canvas in the size you picked, layer by layer, and you see a photograph of the finished painting and approve it before it leaves the studio. A flat, bright picture like one of the jungles rewards a large size, since the leaves are the subject and they need room to read; the Tabby and the flower piece hold up small. The studio artists work from the public domain original, and you see the photograph before anything is packed. Frames are optional and chosen on the product page, and the same title can be ordered twice at two sizes for two different rooms. Shipping is free worldwide, and nothing leaves the studio until you have said yes to the photograph. Seven sizes are available and the frame is optional, so the same picture can be a small study by a desk or the one thing on a wall. Shipping is free worldwide and returns stay open for 90 days.

Frequently asked questions

Which Henri Rousseau painting is the most famous?

Tiger in a Tropical Storm, the 1891 picture that was the first of the jungle paintings, and The Sleeping Gypsy of 1897 are the two on our list of the 100 most famous. By orders, The Hungry Lion and The Dream come first in this collection, and by traffic the tiger leads everything else.

Who was Le Douanier?

Le Douanier was Henri Rousseau. Henri Rousseau collected tolls and taxes for a living, and the nickname is a humorous description of that job, given to a man who started painting seriously in his early forties and left the office at 49 to paint full-time.

Where is The Sleeping Gypsy?

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where Olga Guggenheim donated it in 1939. In the museum it hangs next to van Gogh's 1889 The Starry Night, which is also the practical reason a hand-painted copy is the only version anyone can own.

What is the Naive or Primitive manner?

The manner Rousseau painted in: flat space, hard outlines, strong color and a level of detail that ignores academic modeling. He was self-taught and came out of the working class, and his success helped make room in the modern art world for naive and outsider painting. What looks like a mistake in his drawing is the style itself, and copying it well takes a steadier hand than copying a soft Impressionist surface.

What is post-Impressionism?

The predominantly French movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism, as a reaction against the Impressionist concern with the naturalistic depiction of light and color. Its principal artists were Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Seurat, and Rousseau's work is read in that company.

Why are there so many jungles?

Because they are what he is chiefly known for. The jungle scenes begin with the 1891 tiger and run through the apes, the monkeys and The Dream, and they are the pages visitors open most in this collection. The exotic foliage is the real subject in all of them, which is also why they take a long time to paint by hand.

Which titles work in a child's room?

The Monkeys in the Jungle and Apes in the Orange Grove are the usual choice, since the animals in them are doing nothing worse than sitting in a tree, and The Tabby is the safe small option. The hunting subjects, the two jaguar pieces and The Hungry Lion are better suited to a study or a hallway.

What else is in this collection besides the famous titles?

All 100 of them, sorted into the groups above: the green scenes, the two night pieces, the attack subjects, the river scenes at the edge of town, the figures out of doors, and a still life with a cat. A good part of the list has no animal in it at all, which surprises people who know only the tiger, and those quieter titles are the ones that end up in rooms where nothing else is on the wall.

Is a hand-painted reproduction better than a print?

It is a different object. A print is a photograph of a surface; a hand-painted piece is made with the material the original was made with. For a painter whose pictures are built out of flat color and hard edges, that shows up at the edges: a print gives you a smooth film, while oil gives you the ridge where one leaf ends and the next begins. You also approve a photograph of the finished piece before it ships, which no print ever asks of anyone.

Which Rousseau should I start with?

For the picture art history argues about, take the 1891 tiger. For color on a big wall, take The Dream or The Snake Charmer. For something quieter, take the Bouquet of Flowers or the scene across the Bievre, and for a small room the Tabby does more than you would expect. Whichever you choose, the size is yours to set and the frame is a separate decision on the product page.

Are these original Henri Rousseau paintings?

No. Each one is a new painting, made by hand in oil on canvas after Rousseau's composition. It is a reproduction, not a print, and not the original canvas.

What sizes and frames can I order?

Every Rousseau reproduction here comes in seven sizes, with an optional frame. You see a photo of the finished oil painting and approve it before it ships, worldwide shipping is free, and returns stay open for 90 days.