| French painter Henri Rousseau, born this day in 1844, was the archetype of the modern naive artist. He expressed himself mainly in richly coloured and meticulously detailed pictures of lush jungles, wild beasts, and exotic figures—e.g., The Sleeping Gypsy (1897) and The Snake-Charmer (1907). After exhibiting with the Fauves in 1905, Rousseau became an object of admiration to avant-garde artists. |