Henri Emilien Rousseau (1875-1933) - the poplar alley in the Camargue 1921

Henri Emilien Rousseau 1875-1933 - the poplar alley in the Camargue 1921
Oil on canvas signed and dated lower left Henri Rousseau 21, titled on the back on the frame "L'allée de peuplier en Camargue n°1" in pencil. Dimensions : Frame height 73cm (28.7in)- width 100cm (39.4in). Frame height 91.5cm - width 118.5cm.
Henri Émilien Rousseau is a traveler painter of the early twentieth century. Born in Cairo in 1875, he died in 1933 in Aix-en-Provence. He is mainly known for his works on the Camargue, Provence and North Africa. Gifted in drawing from an early age, he was introduced by his father, a former engineer of the Suez Canal, to the painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was awarded the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1900 and a travel grant to the Salon des Artistes Français. He used it to travel through Belgium, the Netherlands, Tunisia and Spain. After this initiatory journey, he settled in Versailles and set up his studio in the Villa des Arts in Paris. In 1919, fascinated by the light of Provence, he moved to Aix-en-Provence with his large family (7 children). Knight of the Legion of Honor for the arts, he became a notable figure in the region. As a member of the "family" of travelling painters, he devoted himself to Tunisia, Algeria and especially Morocco (Provence and the Camargue remained his anchor points). His success, almost immediate with a wealthy and bourgeois clientele, is punctuated by numerous exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Marseille. The museums of Buenos Aires, Granet in Aix en Provence, Réattu in Arles, and a dozen others in France hold works by him. His work (drawings, gouaches, oils) is composed of landscapes of Brittany, manades of the Camargue, but especially of Maghrebian subjects with horsemen, falconers, fantasias, gates of fortified cities... 250 illustrations, about twenty mural decorations of private mansions and numerous portraits (including those of Lyautey and the Sultan of Morocco) complete the artist's production. In 1912, Henri Émilien Rousseau discovered the Camargue, led by Édouard Doigneau, one of his colleagues and friends. He visited Arles, Marseille, Aigues-Mortes and the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer where he attended religious festivals. He saw for the first time the famous herdsmen and their herd: "for a painter the most interesting spectacle is the arrival (the abrivade) of the half-dozen bulls framed by the herdsmen of the manade. Vibrant with movement and bursts of energy, they run along the road across the plain covered with brush and cut by large marshes. Introduced to the Marquis Baroncelli-Javon, famous manadier and poet, the artist has the opportunity to ride in his company in the marshes and to admire more closely the wild and authentic landscapes: "[The marquis] praises me this life of freedom and physical activity in a region whose male beauty always moves him, and in the midst of people whose nature is rustic and frustrated but whose souls are of a beautiful temperament and great clarity." Enchanted by this first contact and eager to replenish his supply of subjects, Rousseau returned to the Camargue in 1914, before settling in Aix-en-Provence in 1919.
Three retrospective exhibitions, and as many catalogs, have been devoted to him: in 1997 in Toulouse, at the Musée des Augustins, in 2007 in Aix-en-Provence, at the Musée des Tapisseries and in 2015 in Lavaur, at the Musée Municipal du Pays Vaurais. The Henri Rousseau Association has been protecting his work since 1994. This painting is reproduced in photography in the catalog of the Dobiaschofsky Auktionen AG of Bern BE, Switzerland, May 5, 1998 page 160.
Bibliography: Marc Ambroise-Rendu Co-founder of the Henri Rousseau Association and grandson of the painter.