The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

A lion buries its teeth into an antelope at the heart of this thick, leafy jungle, painted by Henri Rousseau in 1905. The remarkable thing is that Rousseau never set foot in a jungle. He built these wild scenes from wandering the botanical gardens in Paris, flipping through picture books, and filling in the rest with pure imagination. All around the struggling animals, shadowy creatures watch from the greenery. An owl, a panther, and other half hidden shapes lurk among the leaves, while a red sun glows low on the horizon.

Before he ever picked up a brush seriously, Rousseau spent his days working as a toll collector, and he taught himself to paint. That self-taught quality gave his work its flat shapes and careful, almost childlike detail, a style people call "naive." Critics of his time were not kind about it. This canvas changed things for him, though. When it appeared at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, it shared a room with the daring young painters soon nicknamed the Fauves, and it finally brought Rousseau some genuine recognition. The very features once mocked are what people treasure now, and the scene holds both a sense of danger and an odd, dreamlike quiet.