{"id":19516,"date":"2025-12-24T16:02:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T16:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/12\/24\/review-henri-rousseau-a-painters-secrets-at-the-barnes-foundation\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T16:02:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T16:02:29","slug":"review-henri-rousseau-a-painters-secrets-at-the-barnes-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/12\/24\/review-henri-rousseau-a-painters-secrets-at-the-barnes-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u201cHenri Rousseau, A Painter\u2019s Secrets\u201d at the Barnes Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy<\/em>, 1897. Oil on canvas, the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, 1939. \u00a9 The Museum of Modern Art\/Licensed by SCALA \/ Art Resource, NY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Welcome to\u00a0<\/i>One Fine Show<\/i><\/a>, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.<\/i><\/p>\n

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One of the more hilarious concepts invented by Gen-Z is that of \u201cthe body count,\u201d a reliable vein of TikTok content fodder wherein people ask each other how many sexual partners they\u2019ve had. Even leaving aside the connotation that having sex with someone is similar to killing them, it is wild to imply that any adult could or should keep track of that number. It reminds me of Martin Scorsese<\/a> being explained the concept of a \u201csneaky link<\/a>\u201d by his 20-something daughter and shrugging, \u201cWe never used that term. We never saw specific people in my day.\u201d<\/p>\n

You have to wonder what Philadelphia Zoomers will make of Henri Rousseau<\/a>\u2019s The Past and the Present, or Philosophical Thought<\/i>, which was painted in 1899 and celebrates his second marriage with images of both parties\u2019 deceased spouses in the clouds above. The painting is featured in \u201cHenri Rousseau: A Painter\u2019s Secrets,\u201d a new exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, which with 18 paintings, owns the world\u2019s largest collection of works by the artist. The show pairs these with other significant loans for a total of 60 works, providing an authoritative introduction to this artist for those unfamiliar with his unique career.<\/p>\n

Rousseau was a customs officer in Paris who only became an artist in his 40s; his work was exhibited at the Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants, where anyone who paid the entrance fee could display their work. But you can\u2019t call him an outsider artist\u2014not when his work was so in conversation with art history and so influential, especially on acquaintances like Paul Gauguin<\/a> and Pablo Picasso<\/a>. If you\u2019ve been to the Museum of Modern Art in the last few years, you\u2019ve probably admired their major work by him, The Sleeping Gypsy<\/i> (1897), which is at the Barnes. It\u2019s hard to believe it\u2019s from the 19th Century because it is intensely strange and modern. A lion sniffs the sleeper who might be pretending to be asleep or actually dreaming. Either way, she smiles unconcerned. The folds of her hair become her hair, and her arm may become a guitar. There\u2019s much here about the nature of creativity.<\/p>\n

The MoMA piece is shown alongside two of his other undisputed masterpieces for the first time ever. These are Unpleasant Surprise<\/i> (1899-1901) from the Barnes and The Snake Charmer<\/i> (1907) from the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay. In the former, a nude bather is surprised by a comically menacing bear as a hunter simultaneously shoots the bear, which might explain her curious pose and expression. As Christopher Green<\/a> writes in the catalogue, \u201cIs she a victim in mortal danger at all?\u201d The catalogue explains further that the work \u201ctapped into a contemporary taste for erotic encounters between humans and wild beasts,\u201d and it does feel possible that the adjective was meant to be ironic.<\/p>\n

The Snake Charmer<\/i> was made for Berthe Delaunay<\/a>, mother of the modernist Robert Delaunay<\/a>, and of course, has its own connotations. The charmer is feminine but also not quite human, with skin as black as the night, hair below the knees and perhaps some kind of fur. She\u2019s a weird black hole at the center of a lush, layered and false-looking jungle, drawing snakes not just to her but into her world of shadows. Perhaps Gen-Z can relate to these complex views on heterosexuality, where there is as much to fear as there is to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Henri Rousseau: A Painter\u2019s Secrets<\/b><\/a>\u201d<\/b> is on view at the Barnes Foundation through February 22, 2026.<\/b><\/p>\n

More exhibition reviews<\/b><\/h3>\n

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