The French painter Henri Rousseau was born in 1844. Although a contemporary of the Impressionists Van Gogh and Gaugain, he had a style and subject matter all his own: imaginary jungles with exotic flowers and plants, monkeys, tigers peering out from dense foliage. Unlike Gaugain who gave up civilization to paint his dreams in Tahiti, Rousseau found material for his in the Paris arboretums. He was self taught and never saw a jungle.
These images are representations of what Rousseau might have painted, a story his might have told...of a young girl hearing a lute player and falling asleep. She dreams of a strange jungle...then wakes, startled by danger. Yet was it a dream?