Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets
Born in 1844, and with no formal art training, Rousseau defied the odds to become a cult figure to avant-garde legends such as Pablo Picasso. His paintings—dreamlike, symbolic, and deeply strange—range from imaginative visions of the jungle to portraits that capture his neighbors and loved ones.
Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets is the first major US exhibition in decades dedicated to this pioneering French painter. Featuring nearly 60 works—including world-famous highlights—the exhibition invites you to see Rousseau in a whole new light.
To the unassuming student or visitor, the arrangement of the Barnes Foundation's collection can be surprising, confusing, or outright frustrating. This was by design. Dr. Barnes deliberately created a visual environment that would disrupt even the most seasoned gallerygoer's complacency. The ensembles are meant to provoke as well as instruct. By juxtaposing objects of dissimilar traditions, subjects, and media, Dr. Barnes drew attention to specific relationships between and among works in his collection. All aspects of the ensembles-the objects, paintings, frames, and their arrangement-is the work of the collector himself.
Learn more about the Barnes ensembles and method in The Barnes Foundation Handbook.