Research Information System
INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM IGRS’22, İstanbul, Turkey, 1 - 03 June 2022, pp.238-244
Henri Rousseau is one of the important representatives of naive painting, whose desire to exhibit his
works, which were ridiculed for not being understood during his lifetime, could only be realized after
his death. Naive painting is more than a trend, it is a style. The most distinctive feature of naive painting
is its denial of the rules of perspective and its childlike expression. Henri Rousseau spent a significant
part of his life as a tax collector at the gates of Paris without studying painting. Although Rousseau had
never been outside of France or even Paris, he portrayed the colorful mysterious life of the exotic
rainforests quite realistically in his large-scale paintings. His unwavering belief in his talents allowed
the majority of his paintings to be displayed comfortably, almost every year, away from the constraints
of salon exhibitions, the Hall of Independents, an alternative group by his paintings exhibited. His works
were appreciated by the young painter of the period Pablo Picasso and the writer Alfred Jarry. Henry
Rousseau's work "Sleeping Gypsy", painted in 1897, is considered a fantastic and mysterious painting
by art critics even today