Chapter 18 I The Anarchists on the Montmartre Hills (2) The Naive Old Painter

A little bird landed on the shoulder of an angel, and it sang to the passionate Rousseau. Guillaume Apollinaire It is impossible to imagine that such an eccentric painter also often associates with the "laundry boat" gang.He is 65 years old and looks like a loyal elder.He leans on crutches, wears a fedora hat, and is hunched over, from Plaisance, where he lives, in the 14th arrondissement in the south of Paris.He set off and hurriedly walked up the Montmartre hill with small steps.From his weather-beaten face, it can be seen that he is kind and can withstand any emotional impact, but when he encounters anything that goes wrong, his face turns red.Henri Rousseau has entered the third age group (that is, has become an old man), but it seems that he has just left childhood.His naivety is also reflected in his paintings. Elie Faur thinks his paintings are as naive and ridiculous as Utriro. The two painters are equally innocent and ignorant.

People called him Customs Rousseau, because he used to be in charge of the inspection of food products entering the capital at the tax collection office in Paris. Retired at the age of 50 and began to study painting, but never entered any professional art school, completely self-taught.He knew nothing about the prospect of painting and the rules of painting, and he never cared about it. He relied entirely on instinct, but he was very serious in painting.His experience is very simple.Apollinaire wrote poems and made up his history at will as follows: You never forget that Rousseau, the ancient Aztec country, is located in what is now Mexico.scenery,

A forest full of mango and pineapple trees, The monkey hollowed out the watermelon, and the ground was covered with blood-red flesh. There people shot the golden king. The paintings you draw are all those you saw in Mexico, The scorching sun on the top of the endless banana grove, You, a brave soldier, Dare to use your own clothes Exchange for the blue Ancient Cavalry Tunic from Customs Officers. ... The poet freely imagined Henri Rousseau as a sergeant major in the French army in the Mexican War when he wrote, and his paintings depict what he saw and heard there.In fact, Henry Rousseau has never been to Mexico, let alone the United States.During his military service, he only went to Angers, not far from Nantes, France.His understanding of tropical natural scenery is limited to the relevant paintings he saw at the 1889 World Expo.The tropical scenery in his paintings was completely inspired by those paintings in the exhibition (Fig. 28, Fig. 29).Apollinaire also said that Rousseau's paintings "are the only thing that American exoticism provides to plastic arts", and he is wrong again.Bryce Sandras was equally wrong when he wrote:

Please come to Mexico! The tulips blooming everywhere on the plateau exude a leisurely fragrance, The rays of the sun stretch out like melon vines in all directions, Like a painter's drawing board and brush, Those colorful paints are dizzying like thunderous gongs, Rousseau had been there, There he made life shine brightly... Rousseau belongs only to himself, not to any faction, nor to any era.He is neither inclined to Impressionism nor to black African art, he is a modernist.Perhaps he can be regarded as a Fauvist, because at the Autumn Art Fair in 1905, his work "Hungry Lion" (Fig. 30) was hung next to the works of Matisse, Vlaminck and Derain.Louis Vauxell admired Rousseau very much, and he believed that Rousseau's situation proved that "the most unlearned and least cultured people are the most gifted artists."It has been said that he was a deaf mute in the painting world, making his own way alone by instinct.Even he himself is ignorant of the rules he follows, if they exist.

He is a completely unique type of painting. He shows some classicism, but it is very difficult to classify it. them. It was Alfred Jarry who introduced him to Alfred Valette and his wife La Hilde, two advisers of the French literary magazine "French Courier", and later introduced him to Apollinaire.Jarry was also born in Laval and was a close friend of Rousseau, a customs officer.So far, people don't know more, whether Jarry likes the painter himself, or likes his rashness.At any rate, it was he, the least conservative of writers, who introduced the good Rousseau to the French Courier, which made him famous.Then came some avant-garde painters who admired Rousseau's observation of nature.

The first is Picasso. In 1908, Picasso bought a painting "Portrait of Madame M" (Figure 31) completed by Rousseau in 1895 for five francs from Papa Surrier. The character in the painting is his first wife.Picasso then bought some of his other works.Clearly, Picasso was intrigued by the primitivism in the work of the former customs clerk.He himself has long sought a way out of the academic school, suffering in vain.In Rousseau's paintings, he found a creative method different from his own, and he believed that this was one of the ways to get rid of academicism. Rousseau lived alone on Bel-Air Street not far from Montmartre.He lost his wife twice and became a widower.His children, except one, left him one by one.

On the door of his house, there is such a small notice made of cardboard: Tutoring: sketching, oil painting, music, low fees. His life was very poor.Twice a week he made chowder, and after eating it once, he put the pan under the bed, which was his entire ration for a week.It's a pity that all the poor people in the district flocked to him when he had just made the chowder.As a result, his food for a week is not enough for him to eat for two days. He often received some of his pupils at home and sold their portraits to dealers in the area (when MoMA set out to find his paintings, one was found at a plumber's house, one at a farmer's). I also found another one at home...).Before Vollard, Jude and Paul became interested in his work, only a few friends bought his paintings.

The poverty of life did not prevent him from entertaining guests at home.After a week of regular belt-tightening and starvation, he sent out invitations with what he billed as an "artist's evening" program. The program for April 1, 1909 is as follows: playlist Ceciliana (polka dance) Bell Flower (Mazurka Dance) Rose Flower (Waltz) baby polka Angel's Dream (Mazurka) Clémence (Waltz) [Excerpt from Guillaume Apollinaire's article "The Evening Party in Paris" on January 15, 1914] The usual party attendees at Henri Rousseau's house included the baker, the grocer, and all the residents of the Laundry Boat.The host makes the guests sit in a row on the chairs, while he himself sits at the door, ready to welcome the new arrivals.Everyone recites a poem or a nursery rhyme.Then Rousseau took out his violin and played a ballad for everyone.If he was tired, he would lie on the couch in the studio with all his clothes on, wake up in the morning, feel happy, and start painting.

When feeling very lonely, he decided to remarry and start a family.He fell in love with someone, pursued her hard, and begged his friends to help him.One day he came to the Volald's house and tried his best to make a picture better than any he had ever done before.He handed the painting to the art dealer, who thought it was very good.The painter impatiently said to the dealer: "Excellent. So, can you give me a proof of my progress?" "How old is your fiancée? Is she underage? Does she still need her parents' permission to marry?" Volald asked. "No. She's 54," Rousseau replied with a charming smile.

In this way, he got the certificate from Volald and the same certificate given by Apollinaire.Even so, he was unable to marry.Good guy Rousseau is still a bachelor. It took him several months to complete the portraits of Marie Laurence and Guillaume Apollinaire.The reason is not lack of enlightenment or creative inspiration, but because he must paint some carnations below the engraving, so he has to wait until the plant blooms. According to Apollinaire, when Rousseau painted a fictitious fantasy painting of gods and monsters, his expression was very nervous, his heart often raised his throat, and sometimes he suddenly panicked and rushed to the window...

The reporter of Le Figaro, Giorgio Clarti, tells some other anecdotes about him: Once, Rousseau was cheated and sentenced to prison, and when the judge gave him a reprieve, he exclaimed happily: : "Thank you, Mr. Judge! To express my gratitude to you, if you wish, I will draw a portrait of you!" His lawyer, Mr. Guillerme, had just finished defending him when Rousseau turned to him and asked loudly: "Now, are you done? May I go?" Like many others, Attorney Guillerme has long wondered whether Rousseau's buffoonish antics stemmed from his sheer stupidity or from his dramatic flair.The first time he asked himself this question was when a customer (Rousseau—Translator's Note) called his office from Laval.He was yelling loudly on the phone, and the lawyer advised him to keep it down. "I can hear what you're saying!" "You, you can hear me! But others can't!" "Of course I can hear...the phone..." "Stupid!" Rousseau interrupted the lawyer angrily. He put the receiver in his palm and added: "I'm talking to Laval's men! How far away, Laval! How can you let them hear me if I don't shout?" His friends, painters or not, rejoice that his character is as childish and unpretentious as his pictures.Picasso liked him, and he liked Picasso.He said to Picasso: "We are two of the greatest contemporary painters. You are the 'Egyptian' type (primitive type), and I am the modern type." The Spaniard disagreed, and he probably thought so. In 1908, a few months before leaving the "laundry boat", Picasso decided to organize a banquet specially for Rousseau. Congratulations to the painter of the picture. They spent a lot of time preparing for the party.Fernand and Picasso tied some branches and leaves to the roof beams in the venue; the ceiling was also decorated with leaves; the walls were covered with black African art masks; another chair was added to a chair in front of the glass wall , making a throne.Between the banners and the lanterns on the wall behind the throne, a banner reads "Glory to Rousseau!"Rousseau's "Portrait of Madame M" is placed on a tripod in the center of the room, surrounded by colored silk and garlands. The table was already set: a long wooden board supported by many supports, on which were placed dishes borrowed from the restaurant, and food was ordered from Félix Baudin and paid for individually by the participants. People are waiting.It was eight o'clock in the evening, and the food delivery person still hadn't arrived.The guests began to arrive: Braque, Jacques Vaillant, Dalitz, Gertrude Stein, Alice Douglas, and she wore a brand new hat. At eight-thirty, the ordered meal still hadn't arrived, people asked each other, and it was finally clear that Felix Bodin had made a mistake with the date.The crowd began to commotion, and in a blink of an eye, the house was empty.People dispersed to different streets, and finally gathered in some nearby taverns with pastry and rice. The gang from the "Laundry Boat" hurried back to the "Hunter's Pavilion".Marie Lorenson, who was laughing so hard, was carried home by the hands.She lay on her back on the couch, right on top of a tart.Then he sat up again, danced, shouted, covered in butterscotch juice, and flung himself back into the arms of the guests.It didn't take a few minutes for everyone to become sticky, sticking everywhere.Fernand began to curse: "Ugly beauty." Then, the two wrestled together, and the people around them fought together to separate them. After restoring calm, everyone sent Apollinaire to pick up Rousseau in a carriage to have dinner with them.The painter was both surprised and excited, with a small hat on his head, a cane in his left hand, and a violin in his right, standing motionless in the hall.People pushed and pulled to settle him at the table and toasted him together.Apollinaire recited a poem, and Salmon also recited one.Everyone drank a lot.Still in high spirits, Marie Laurence sang a Norman ditty.Guillaume whispered to her to restrain herself, but to no avail, he pulled her outside.She was much calmer when they returned to the house.Rousseau sat on the throne prepared for him.Salmon jumped on the table and danced with his hands and feet, and Picasso pushed him outside.Leon Stein stood in front of Rousseau, protecting him from the onslaught of those present.However, Mr. Rousseau, the painter, fell asleep in a daze.The wax from a lantern above his head fell drop by drop on the top of his head.When he woke up, he was still enjoying the wax cap that had formed on his head.The lanterns were burned, and people were in a hurry, some climbed onto chairs, and some climbed onto tables to put out the fire.After order was restored, Rousseau took out his violin and sang his childhood nursery rhyme while playing: Why!Hey, I have a toothache! Seeing everyone applauding together, he went on to sing another song: Me, I don't like big newspapers, Big newspapers that talk about politics. what the eskimos did for me It was they who plundered Africa... Tired of singing, he fell asleep again. In the middle of the night, the party was still going on, and some visitors came in: it was Fred and his donkey Lolo.Lolo rubs this one's clothes, arches another's hat; an American couple, man in dark dress, woman in frock, horrified by the art of these sleazy Frenchmen, twist left quickly. At dawn, people raised money to hire a carriage for Rousseau.They escorted him to the side of the carriage, put his cane and hat in his hands, and all embraced him farewell. Opinions vary about the event: some consider it the last large-scale celebration of the great Lavignan era.According to Fernand Olivier, this activity meant that the gang had "boarded the customs officer Rousseau".Maurice Heinard, in his 1914 essay "The Evenings in Paris," said that such events were actually a poke fun at Rousseau.Gertrude Stein was neutral.Salmon fought back against the nasty comments, defending the painter Rousseau: We love Henri Rousseau not because of his stupidity and ignorance of painting, nor because of his innocence and simplicity... What we like is his innocence, his perseverance and extraordinary spirit in the face of hard life .For an artist, we admire his great spirit, his ambition to create widely in the art world.Apart from Picasso and Matisse, in this era, few people can create as diligently as he. [Excerpt from "Infinite Remembrance" by André Salmon] The reason why Picasso organized this reception at his home, tidying up the "hunter's house", covering his "Les les Avignons" and rolling up his luggage, was not to ridicule and satirize others, but to Indeed, it was to receive an artist whom he loved and admired very much—Henri Rousseau. Of course, Henri Rousseau often made him laugh.He is also funny for his naivety and old urchin's dreams, but everyone laughs and has fun together.Nobody thinks he's stupid.Picasso laughed and played, but he never laughed at his friends.The same is true for Apollinaire.Max Jacob said: Picasso did not allow this.Modigliani's fiancée, Beatrice Hastings, said that Picasso refused her access to his house because she spoke ill of the artist Rousseau. No matter what the situation, Rousseau always kept his words and deeds as a good man and never complained.People joked with him, which just proved that people were interested in him.In terms of painting, he didn't need to ask for anything from others, because he knew full well that he had a talent. If you change the era and place, he is eligible to organize a series of grand banquets to entertain Picasso, Braque, Apollinaire... He is also eligible to be awarded the special honor of pursuing artistic creation.He is qualified to cross the Seine River with these artists who are constantly pursuing artistic innovation in the near future, and ignite the raging flame of the artistic revolution in Montparnasse. A month before he bid farewell to the world, he had fallen in love with Eugenie Leonie, but regrettably she had rejected him.Henri Rousseau tried to convince her: ...Therefore, we should have children, and at our age, there is no need to worry about it.Yes, you make me miserable.Fortunately, I can still feel it.Let's unite, you can try to see if I am no longer able to serve you. [See Letter to Madame Eugenie-Leoni, August 9, 1910] He has no time to be a husband. One day in September 1910, his friends all received an obituary: Henri Rousseau died of an ulcer at Necker Hospital.All are invited to attend the religious service at the Church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, rue du Tot. But no one came: the obituary was posted too late.The funeral has been held.