Rousseau: The Snake Charmer

In the midst of a lush, overgrown jungle, illuminated by a full moon, the figure of a woman emerges. Her hair and skin are pitch black, making her look almost like a shadow, yet her glowing white eyes are fixed directly toward us. Before long, as she begins to play the flute in her hands, snakes appear from the grass and from deep within the jungle, as if beckoned by her, and begin to writhe in time with the music.

The creator of this mysterious painting, The Snake Charmer, Henri Rousseau, was a self-taught artist. He had no experience with formal mentors or art school, and he knew nothing of basic painting techniques, including perspective. He did not even begin painting until he was over 40.
His paintings were mocked as looking like "children's scribbles," but at the same time, they possessed a unique flavor and charm not found in the works of other painters, earning praise from the likes of Picasso and the poet Apollinaire.
In particular, his series of jungle-themed works, starting with The Snake Charmer, became highly popular and are now synonymous with Rousseau.
But why did he paint the jungle?
Why do his jungle paintings attract people and leave such an unforgettable impression?
By tracing The Snake Charmer and the process of its creation, I would like to approach the answer.

1. "The Customs Officer" Rousseau, on the path to painting

Henri Rousseau was born in 1844 in Laval, a provincial city in western France.
He was good at art and music from a young age, but he struggled with his studies. Furthermore, because his family was poor, he was forced to drop out of high school, and the option of pursuing a career in art was unthinkable.
After working at a law firm for a time and serving five years in the military, he began working in 1871, at the age of 27, as an employee of the Paris toll office (a place where merchants and farmers bringing goods into Paris paid entry taxes). The nickname "Customs Officer Rousseau" comes from this background, though his actual job was as a gatekeeper at the customs house. Around the same time, he married and had children.
While he performed his daily duties to support his family, the desire to paint, which he had loved since childhood, remained alive within him, and from around the age of 40, he began to use his limited spare time to paint. He started visiting the Louvre Museum to study art.
The Louvre, counted among the world's three greatest museums, houses works from a wide range of eras, from antiquity to the Renaissance and the mid-19th century. Even today, there is a system where anyone who obtains permission can freely copy the works in the museum for three months.
Many painters of Rousseau's generation, such as Renoir and Degas, also used this system to learn and build the foundation for their own painting styles.
Although Rousseau started late, he, like Renoir and the others, worked hard at copying the works of his predecessors, especially traditional ones. He then used the results of his studies to create his own works and began exhibiting them at the Salon des Indépendants, where anyone could submit work without a jury.
One of his earliest examples is A Carnival Evening.

What is depicted is a scene on a carnival night where a man and woman dressed as Pierrot and Colombine are taking a walk in the woods. The trees, painted as pitch-black silhouettes, have every branch meticulously drawn, looking almost like a shadow play.
He also attempted to create depth in the space by varying the shades of the trees, but the amateurishness is undeniable.
However, the white full moon floating high in the sky illuminates the scene with a serene light, creating a mysterious atmosphere.
Is there any other work like this?
In fact, it was panned by the newspapers, and there was no end to the people who laughed at Rousseau's work at the venue. However, Rousseau took it positively as "a sign of interest, as they could not ignore my work," and continued to submit works to the Salon des Indépendants almost every year.
In 1893, he retired from the customs office, where he had worked for 22 years, to devote himself to painting.

2. Painting the "Jungle"

In 1889, at the Paris World's Fair, Rousseau had a fateful encounter. He saw the landscapes of the southern colonies of Tahiti and Senegal, recreated with tropical plants in a corner of the venue, and was instantly captivated.
In 1891, he produced his first jungle-themed work, Tiger in a Tropical Storm, and presented it at the Salon des Indépendants.

Countless fine lines running diagonally across the entire canvas and large, bending tree branches tell the story of being in the middle of a violent storm. A white lightning bolt is also visible in the sky.
The tiger, appearing and disappearing among the grass, has its eyes wide open and its teeth bared, seemingly expressing with its whole body the surprise and fear of being struck by a "surprise" storm.
Because of this comical depiction of the tiger,
despite depicting a tense scene, a somewhat humorous atmosphere can be felt from the work.

After this, Rousseau did not paint the jungle for over a decade, but in 1905, several pieces, including The Hungry Lion, were accepted into the Salon d'Automne (an avant-garde art exhibition that started in 1903) and were well received.
Encouraged by this event, Rousseau began working on many pieces with jungle motifs.
And in 1907, his masterpiece, The Snake Charmer, was born.

3. The Snake Charmer

Although the jungle is now synonymous with Rousseau, in reality, Rousseau himself never left France in his life, and of course, he had never seen a real jungle. Everything was based on his imagination, fueled by things like the botanical gardens in Paris and children's animal picture books.

The Snake Charmer was also painted based on stories of a trip to India heard from the mother of the painter Robert Delaunay, and it was a piece that received great acclaim at the 1907 Salon d'Automne.
The tropical plants that fill two-thirds of the right side of the canvas have each leaf meticulously drawn, and more than 20 types of green are used.
In contrast to this level of detail on the right, what is depicted on the left is a vast expanse of water.
The full moon in the sky casts a mysterious light.
If you look closely, there are many unnatural points regarding how the leaves overlap and appear, considering it was painted from a single perspective. But what does that matter?
As you stare at the painting, you feel as if you can hear the tone of the woman's flute, feel the hot, humid air unique to the tropics, and even smell the rich scent of the grass.
As if you yourself have stepped into the painting.

Rousseau had not learned the "basic" techniques and knowledge of painting, such as perspective and accurate drawing, and remained poor at them.
However, Rousseau possessed an imagination, a sense of color, and a strength of belief in his own talent that more than compensated for those weaknesses.
Also, perhaps because he lacked that knowledge, he was not bound by established concepts or trends, and was able to freely expand his imagination, paint, and play within it.
Thinking of it that way, Rousseau's works are the very "dreams" that welled up from his heart, and perhaps he continues to live on even now through those "dreams".