Henri Rousseau's 'The Sleeping Gypsy' (1897) is the high point of the self-taught artist's 'Naïve' imagination: beneath a full moon in a flat desert, a barefoot wanderer sleeps with her lute and water jar beside her while a stately lion sniffs her striped robe without threat. The diagrammatic composition, the unnaturally clear light, and the dream-like calm of the lion's encounter turned Rousseau into a crucial forebear of Surrealism. Picasso held his famous 'Rousseau banquet' in Montmartre in 1908 in honour of the artist, and after Rousseau's death the painting was even briefly doubted as a forgery.

Exhibition Venue

MoMA

New York, United States