The Sleeping Gypsy

Henri Rousseau, 1897 · Gallery 501 · Floor 5

So this is the guy Picasso threw a banquet for. We’ll get there. Look at the lion first. He’s standing over a sleeping woman in the middle of a desert. And he’s not attacking her. He’s sniffing her. She’s out cold. Mandolin by her hand, a jug of water, a walking stick. Not a drop of blood. Henri Rousseau. Self-taught. For twenty-two years, he collects taxes on goods coming into Paris. So people start calling him Le Douanier. The customs officer. It sticks. The guy never saw a desert. He studies animals in Paris, works from pictures. Then puts them somewhere he’s never been. And he’s serious about this. Two years before he paints it, he writes his own little biography. Says he’s on his way to becoming one of the best realist painters around. Realist. Seriously… Look at that moon. The year after he paints this, he writes to the mayor of Laval, his hometown, and offers them the painting. Calls it a souvenir from one of the town’s children. And he explains what’s happening. A lion wanders over, picks up the woman’s scent, and doesn’t eat her. He’s asking about two thousand francs. Laval says no. And the painting drops out of sight. Ten years later, Picasso throws him that banquet. There’s a banner: Honor to Rousseau. Rousseau takes out his violin and plays a waltz he wrote himself. And, the story goes, tells Picasso they’re the two greatest painters of their time. You in the Egyptian style. Me in the modern. By every account, he meant it. Meanwhile, nobody knows where this thing is. It turns up in 1924, at a charcoal dealer’s in Paris. Rousseau’s been dead fourteen years. In 1939, it gets here. The next year, MoMA’s director calls it one of the great masterpieces of modern times. Laval could’ve had it for about two thousand francs. So look at the lion one more time. He seems to be looking past her. Like he forgot why he walked over.

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