The Flamingoes

Painted by Henri Rousseau, this peaceful scene shows a quiet lake framed by tall palm trees, with pink flamingoes standing along the shore and water lilies floating across the surface. Rousseau was a self-taught artist who worked as a customs officer, which earned him the nickname "Le Douanier" (the customs man). He never traveled to the exotic jungles he loved to paint. Instead, he found his inspiration much closer to home, visiting the botanical gardens and the natural history museum in Paris, then letting his imagination fill in the rest.

That made-up quality is part of what makes his work so charming. Notice how flat and dreamlike everything feels, with the trees lined up like a wallpaper pattern and the flowers far too large to be real. Critics in his own time often laughed at his simple, untrained style, but later artists like Picasso admired exactly that honesty and boldness. Today Rousseau is celebrated as one of the great naive painters, an artist who proved that you do not need formal training or a passport to create a whole world of your own.