Henri Rousseau's 'The Football Players' ('Les Joueurs de football', 1908) is a rare sporting subject by the self-taught Parisian master of Naïve painting who spent his career as a customs officer. Four men in candy-striped rugby jerseys leap and wrestle for the ball in a stiff, ceremonial choreography beneath a precise double row of poplars. Rousseau's characteristic flatness and hieratic stillness gives the modern sport a dreamlike, gently absurd air. Acquired by Solomon R. Guggenheim via the dealer Pierre Matisse in 1925, it has been a permanent highlight of the Guggenheim collection in New York ever since.

Exhibition Venue

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

New York, United States

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