Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings

Posted by Cindy on September 26, 2009

I am loving Henri Rousseau’s style. It’s somewhat of a folk style with lots of bright colors. Combine that with whimsical scenes and it makes me smile. So many of the artists we’ve studied have been too serious for me, but the lighter side of Rousseau has revived my artist’s eye!

Rousseau spent many days studying, sketching and painting exotic plants while visiting huge greenhouses that housed plants and trees from all over the world. These plants inspired him to paint jungle scenes. In most of his jungle scenes, you’ll find animals or people hiding in the midst of the plants. Rousseau would get his inspiration and models for many of those additions as he looked at photographs from magazines. To look at his paintings, you’d think he spent a lot of time in jungles, but not so!

Surprise

Fight Between a Tiger and a Lion

Two Monkeys in a Jungle

The Waterfall

Here are Mahayla and Caleb’s attempts at a Rousseau jungle painting…

We actually tried to pick leaves that looked jungle-like and roll over them with painted brayers to make prints, but it didn’t work very well. Instead, the kiddos just decided to paint with brushes.