Henri Rousseau

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born on 21 May 1844 in France and spent decades as a customs officer, a job that earned him the nickname Le Douanier. He didn't take painting seriously until his early forties, working in a self-taught style that would later be called Naïve or Primitive. At 49 he retired to paint full-time, turning out work that critics ridiculed for its technical awkwardness and childlike flatness. He died on 2 September 1910, still largely dismissed. Only afterward did the art world reverse itself, recognizing him as a self-taught genius whose odd, dream-dense canvases influenced generations of avant-garde artists who saw what the establishment had missed.