Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Flix Rousseau was a French PostImpressionist painter in the Nave or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector. Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a selftaught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseaus work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avantgarde artists.
Henri Rousseau was born in Laval, France, in 1844 into the family of a plumber he was forced to work there as a small boy. He attended Laval High School as a day student and then as a boarder, after his father became a debtor and his parents had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. Though mediocre in some of his high school subjects, Rousseau won prizes for drawing and music. After high school, he worked for a lawyer and studied law, but attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army. He served four years, starting in 1863. With his fathers death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. In 1868, he married Clmence Boitard, his landlords 15yearold daughter, with whom he had six children . In 1871, he was appointed as a collector of the octroi of Paris, collecting taxes on goods entering Paris. His wife died in 1888 and he married Josephine Noury in 1898. He started painting seriously in his early forties by age 49, h
Source: Wikipedia