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Henri Rousseau Henri Rousseau was a self-taught painter who began intensive painting when he was 40 years old. In his time he was belittled, and even today some art critics regard his work as naive or folk. Rousseau’s disadvantage was his background. It is astonishing how this man from the working class with no artistic training was able to find a style of his own and how he never painted from the styles of the artist around him. He once said #“I have been told that my work is not of this century. As you will understand, I cannot now change my manner, which I have acquired as a result of obstinate toil.” One might think that after no formal training he would be eager to learn techniques from his fellow artists, to experiment with the trendy styles like impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism or cubism. But Rousseau wasn’t, and that is what makes him so unique. Rousseau was gifted with an exceptional sense of design and a feeling for color. He was a perfect example of the kind of artist in who the surrealist believe: #“the untaught eye could see much further than that of the trained artist.” Henri Julien Rousseau was born in 1844 in Laval, a town in northwestern France. As a child Rousseau showed an interest