French 1844-1910 Henri Rousseau Locations He was born in Laval in the Loire Valley into the family of a plumber. 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. He was mediocre in some subjects at the high school but won prizes for drawing and music. He worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army," serving for four years, starting in 1863. With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. In 1871, he was promoted to the toll collector's office in Paris as a tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art. His wife died in 1888 and he later remarried. Rousseau claimed he had "no teacher other than nature", although he admitted he had received "some advice" from two established Academic painters, Felix Auguste-Clement and Jean-Leon Gerome. Essentially he was self-taught and is considered to be a naive or primitive painter.  Related Paintings of Henri Rousseau :. | Portrait of Monsieur X (Pierre Loti) | In a Tropical Forest: Fight Between a Tiger and a Bull | Portrait of a Child | The Monkeys | War |
Related Artists:
Alexei Venezianov
1780-1847
Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun
French Neoclassical Painter, 1755-1842
Arellano, Juan de
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1614-1676 Spanish painter. He was the pre-eminent painter of flower-pieces in 17th-century Spain. Although Spaniards of the previous generation had painted such works, it was the inspiration of Flemish and Italian examples in Madrid that from c. 1650 encouraged Arellano's success as a specialist in this genre. According to Palomino, who moved to the Court shortly after the artist's death and befriended many painters who had known him, Arellano began to paint flowers only in his thirties after a beginning that showed little promise.