Henri Rousseau’s wild dreams
Michael Prodger | Engelsberg Ideas | 2nd January 2026
The strange case of Rousseau. He desperately wanted to be am. artist and managed to exhibit alongside professional artists. Yet his work was “clumsy and maladroit” with stilted figures, skewed perspective and “dogs out of scale”. His jungle paintings, though intended to be realistic, have a dreamlike quality and seem to contain a narrative. Those qualities appealed to the surrealists who promoted his work. Whether his shortcomings were deliberate or simply a lack of capability is still debated.