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Description: Oil on wood. 30,4 x 50cm. With monogram bottom left: H.R. Craftman's frame.

The verification of authenticity by Maximilien Gauthier (1964), MM. Pierre Courthion and Sonia Delaunay (both 1968) is at hand as a copy.

Provenance:
Hotel Rameau, Georges Blanche, Versailles, 12 June 1969, Lot 84
Gallery Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, 5th auction, 24/25 May 1971, p. 262, no. 1510,
colour plate without pagination.
Rhenish private collection.

Exhibition:
Gallery Wildenstein, New York 1963, cat.-no. 34

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Notes: Henri Rousseau was the most renowned representative of the so-called Naive Art, which is characterized by a particular realistic way of painting while simultaneously achieving a poetic and magical effect. The autodidact, who was toll keeper of profession, became famous on account of his exotic jungle paintings. He exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants as well as in the Salon d'Automne. The public smirked and mocked about his works at first, yet the established artists of the Avant Garde is said to have given his work generous acknowledgement. Rousseau became acquainted with Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Lucien Pissarro and Odilon Redon. In 1891 he painted his first exotic jungle painting: "Storm in the Jungle". As of 1906 Rousseau cultivated a close relationship with Robert Delaunay and the "Naïve" - writer Wilhelm Uhde. Furthermore he had access to the circle of Pablo Picasso and the writer and critic Guillaume Apollinaire, who organised a festive banquet on his distinction. The work at hand is one of the few still lives by Rousseau. It radiates a calm poetry of everyday articles which the artists juxtaposed to their different materials. Similar to the still lives of Cézanne, this work too is free of symbolism. Much more the items represent their formal and colourful character, which is set in relation to another. Striking is the accumulation of round forms corresponding with one another and simultaneously standing in harmonious concord to one another.