• Created in the same year as his death, The Dream was Rousseau’s last painting, which was debuted only a few months before his untimely death. Upon its debut, Guillaume Apollinaire, referencing the negative reviews of previous years, exclaimed that this year, there would be no ridicule, as the painting exuded sheer beauty. 
• With this piece, Rousseau brought together the exotic and the ordinary, the jungle and the couch, and combined the two to form a juxtaposition of composition which engages and intrigues. 
• It is perhaps fitting that this was his last painting before his death, as it was his masterpiece. 
• The Dream, which depicts a nude woman lounging on a divan in the middle of the jungle, represents the pinnacle of Rousseau's achievement. 
• With this work the artist brought together the studio (the sofa is modeled after the one in his own studio) and the jungle, the domestic and the exotic, and earned the respect of the avant-garde artists. 
• They may also have admired the allover precision of the painting, in which each component—the reclining nude, the wide-eyed lions, the abundant greenery—is rendered with equal weight. 
• As the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote, "The picture radiates beauty, that is indisputable. I believe nobody will laugh this year."
  
  
  

• "When I am in these hothouses and see the strange plants from exotic lands, 
    it seems to me that I am entering a dream." 
  The nude model in this painting reclines on a sofa, mixing the domestic and the exotic.

•  The moonlit scene takes place in a desert, where a female gypsy sleeps with a mandolin and jug by her side, untroubled and - amazingly - unharmed by a curious lion.
• The strangeness of the scene is enhanced by the precariously sloping plane and presentation of the animal and gypsy as if below the viewer's perspective.
• The gypsy is dressed in Eastern garb, while the painting as a whole recalls the stories from Arabian Nights, which had been translated into several unabridged versions starting in the mid-1880s.
• In an attempt to sell the piece to his hometown, Rousseau sent the following description to the Mayor of Laval: "A wandering negress, a mandolin player, sleeps in deep exhaustion, her jug beside her.
• A lion happens to pass that way and sniffs at her but does not devour her." For its eerie, meditative beauty and image of humankind's harmony with the animal kingdom, The Sleeping Gypsy has attained iconic status. It has been altered or parodied by various artists (with the lion often replaced by a dog or other animal).

A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic. ”

• It shows a tiger, illuminated by a flash of lightning, preparing to pounce on its prey in the midst of a raging gale. 
• The artist claimed that he had encountered such exotic jungle scenes while serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico, in 1860, but in fact, he had never left France. It is more likely that his inspiration came from the botanical gardens in Paris including the Jardin des Plants.
• On the painting the tiger's prey is beyond the edge of the canvas, so it is left to the viewer's imagination what the outcome will be, although Rousseau's originally titled the painting "Surprised!" it suggests the tiger has the upper hand upon the situation. Rousseau later stated that:

• Surprised! (or Tiger in a Tropical Storm) is painted by Henri Rousseau in 1891. It was the first of the jungle paintings for which the artist is chiefly known. It shows a tiger, illuminated by a flash of lightning, preparing to pounce on its prey in the midst of a raging gale.
• The tiger's prey is beyond the edge of the canvas, so is it left to the imagination of the viewer to decide what the outcome will be, although Rousseau's original title Surprised! suggests the tiger has the upper hand. Rousseau later stated that the tiger was about to pounce on a group of explorers. 
• Despite their apparent simplicity, Rousseau's jungle paintings were built up meticulously in layers, using a large number of green shades to capture the lush exuberance of the jungle. 

1. Article Title
2. Biography.com Editors
3. Website Name
   The Biography.com website
   http://www.biography.com/people/henri-rousseau-9465420
4. Access Date
   February 28, 2016
5. Publisher
   A&E Television Networks

• The French artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was a self-taught painter who became a friend of Picasso and an inspiration to the Paris avant-garde.

• Henri Rousseau was born on May 21, 1844, in Laval, France. 
• While working as a toll collector in Paris, he taught himself to paint and exhibited his work almost annually from 1886 until the end of his life. 
• He was given the nickname "Le Douanier" ("the customs officer") by his acquaintances in the Parisian avant-garde. 
• Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born into a middle-class family in the town of Laval in northwest France on May 21, 1844. 
• Rousseau attended school in Laval until 1860. In his late teens, he worked for a lawyer and then enlisted in the army, although he never saw combat.
•  In 1868, Rousseau left the army and moved to Paris, where he began working as a toll collector at the entrance to the city.
  
  

• The picture depicts the farmland and cattle of Pennsylvanian James Cornell. 
• Hicks's inscription along the bottom of the picture reads: "An Indian summer view of the Farm & Stock OF JAMES C. CORNELL of Northampton Bucks county Pennsylvania. 
• That took the Premium in the Agricultural society, October the 12, 1848 Painted by E. 
• Hicks in the 69th year of his age." The work has been exhibited frequently, with its first display at the Bucks County Bi-Centennial Celebration, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1882.
• "Having no background in academic art, Hicks employed the direct approach of a primitive or folk painter.
• The horizontal band of livestock across the foreground, although childlike in its simplicity, clearly presents each prize-winning animal as an individual portrait. 
• Hicks' delight in creating ornamental pattern is evident in the arrangement of fences, while the rich red and bright white of the house and barn symmetrically flank this central landscape. 
• Although the stark silhouettes of figures and buildings seem naive, Hicks softly blended his paints over the orchard to give the impression of space existing well beyond what the eye can see.

1. For Edward Hicks, a devout Quaker, painting was a means to achieve in himself, and in his viewers, the profound spiritual peace he so highly prized.
2. Since his preaching yielded little income, Hicks also painted in order to earn "an honest living." Trained as a coach and sign painter, Hicks achieved immediate success in his field.
3. He regarded his art, which he began in midlife, as an extension of his craft, painting pictures, as well as signs, on commission.
4. Typically, Hicks painted in oil on wood or canvas, specializing in Biblical scenes, especially Peaceable Kingdoms inspired by Isaiah, as well as history paintings and panoramas of Bucks County farm life. His style was naive, rendering animals and human figures in realistic detail, while handling perspective awkwardly.
5. Although Hicks lacked formal training as an artist, he taught himself in the same manner favored by many academies, copying earlier paintings or etchings.
6. Indeed, most of Hicks's paintings were based on engravings.
7. Due to the discovery, during the twentieth century, of many of Hicks's paintings, his stature as an artist has increased tremendously, so that today he is regarded as the greatest American naive painter.

• Trained as a sign, coach, and ornamental painter, Hicks painted over a hundred versions of his now-famous Peaceable Kingdom between 1820 and his death.
•  His artistic endeavors provided modest support for his activities as a Quaker preacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
• The theme of this painting, drawn from chapter 11 of Isaiah, was undoubtedly attractive to Hicks and fellow Quakers not only for its appealing imagery but also for its message of peace: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." Into many versions, including the Worcester painting, Hicks incorporated a vignette of William Penn's treaty with the Indians, an image he adapted from a popular painting by Benjamin West (q.v.). 
• Hicks may have viewed parallels in the two parts of the composition, inasmuch as Penn, who had introduced Quakerism into Pennsylvania, had also brought about a measure of the peaceable kingdom on earth.

• The Residence of David Twining in 1785, the most personal and autobiographical of these works, records Hicks's memories of the farm where he grew up after his mother died and his father, an official for the British     government, fled the wrath of his townsmen whose sympathy was for the Revolution. 
• Edward, only eighteen months old, was taken in by family friends named Twining.  Eventually Hicks's father paid for his son's upkeep, but Edward absorbed the values of his new family. 
• The son of an Anglican, he became a Quaker lay minister. 
• The son of a Royalist, he became an ardent American patriot, who painted severed copies of both John Trumbull's The Signing of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Sully's Washington Crossing the Delaware. 
• In the lower right corner of The Residence of David Twining five-year-old Edward stands at Elizabeth Twining's knee, listening to her read the Bible. 
• In his published Memoir Hicks compared Mrs.Twining with the wife in Proverbs 31, who was "more precious than jewels." Also in the painting is Mr.Twining, who has opened the barnyard gate to feed the animals. 
• A taciturn and busy man, he remained more distant from Edward than his wife, and thus is shown with his back turned. 
• Twining's daughter Mary and her husband appear in the middle ground mounting horses, their poses derived from Sully's Washington Crossing the Delaware. 
• Beulah, the Twining's youngest daughter, who remained close to Edward all her life, stands in the distance in a hooded doorway, not far from her sister Elizabeth. 
• In the field on the left a black farmhand ploughs straight  furrows, and lower down is a barnyard where the animals rest safe and contented within the fold, representing to Hicks redeemed souls who have accepted the yoke of the Holy Spirit. 
• Hicks painted four versions of The Residence of David Twining in 1785, each slightly different from the others. Carnegie Institute's canvas is the only rendition that includes Elizabeth Twining, the daughter who died in     1832, about thirteen years before the painting was executed.
• Hicks no doubt included her because he made the painting for her daughter, Sarah Hopkins Loines.