Jungle Sunset by Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was born in France in 1844 and lived in Paris. He had a love of art and wanted to go to art school. His father's business familed and his family did not have enough money for him to go to art school. After high school, he served in the army. He and his wife had seven children and he could not spend much time with his art. he worked as a toll collector at a city gate of Paris. He retired at age 49 and began to work full time on painting.

Henri Rousseau had no formal art training, just a love of art, therefore his paintings were called "primitive" because they were much simpler than art school paintings. His painting focused on plant shapes and animal faces and he often used patterns, bright colors, and lots of details in his paintings. Rousseau is most famous for his jungle paintings. Rousseau had never visited a jungle. He got his ideas for these paintings from visits to the zoo and the Paris Botanical Greenhouse and Gardens. His memories and observations became the scenes for the jungles and animals in his work. Notice how he did not make the animals in his paintings completely realistic.

Questions:

• What is the first time you see when you look at this print? This is the focal point. The focal point is what first draws yoru eye (something that stands out).
• Is this a real place? What is the difference between real and imagined? Do the animals and faces look realistic? How did Rousseau use his imagination? When do you use your imagination?
• Since Rousseau had never seen a jungle, do you think this painting looks like a jungle scene?
• Count the different types of trees. How are they different? Describe the different leaf patterns that you see?
• How many shades of green can you count in the picture? Rousseau uses over 50 shades of green in this painting.
• Rousseau used perspective in his paintings. What is perspective? There are levels of distance. Talk about how he uses overlapping. Point out what is big is near, what is small is far and there is less color and texture with distance.

Activities:

During the presentation play a jungle or animals sounds CD in background.

Bring in different types of leaves for the children to observe. Have them discuss how color, shape, and texture differ among them.

Using crayons and white paper, ask the children to make several shades of green. Allow them to use green, blue, yellow, purple, and white and ask them to blend colors together to get a variety of shades. You can use the "painter's palette" document attached for each child to develop their own palette.

Using white paper and crayons have the children draw a picture of a jungle scene. Ask them to draw one of their favorite animals in the jungle. Ask them to color the animal and trees using a pattern design.

National Gallery of Art has an interactive jungle maker based on Rousseau (see link below). May not work for classtime but a good item to reference in the letter home to parents.

Additional Resources:

For more background and kid friendly ideas; books located in kid section at AHML are "The Wonder of a waterfall" by Alan Fowler,

"Henri Rousseau" by Mike Venezia, and "Henri Rousseau: a jungle expedition" by Susanne Pfleger.

Printables:

Links: