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 :. | The Hungry lion attacking an antelope | Portrait of a Child | Monkeys in the Virgin Forest | View of Saint-Cloud from the Heights of Bellevue | Bouquet of Flowers |
Related Artists:
Joseph Marie Vien
French Neoclassical Painter, 1716-1809 French painter, draughtsman and engraver. He was one of the earliest French painters to work in the Neo-classical style, and although his own work veered uncertainly between that style and the Baroque, Vien was a decisive influence on some of the foremost artists of the heroic phase of Neo-classicism, notably Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Fran?ois-Pierre Peyron, Joseph-Benost Suve and Jean-Baptiste Regnault, all of whom he taught. Both his wife, Marie-Therese Reboul (1738-1805), and Joseph-Marie Vien fils (1762-1848) were artists: Marie-Therese exhibited at the Salon in 1757-67
Alfred Seifert
(September 6, 1850 Praskolesy, Bohemia - February 6, 1901, Munich, Germany) was a Czech-German painter, famous for his female portraits. He was born in Praskolesy (present-day Czech Republic) but within a few months, his family moved to nearby Hořovice. As a child, he fell seriously ill, could not walk for four years and spent two years in an orthopedic institution. Instead of playing, he started to draw pictures and his artistic talent soon started to emerge. His first teachers were Karel Werbs, inspector of Estates Gallery at Prague Castle, and Alois Kirnig, landscape painter.
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