Surprised!

Rain cuts across the leaves while a tiger crouches with its back arched and teeth showing. A flash of lightning opens the sky. Whether the animal is frightened or preparing to attack is not entirely clear. Henri Rousseau, a self-taught French painter, made this picture in 1891. It was his first jungle painting, beginning a subject he would return to many times. He had never visited a tropical forest. Plants seen in Paris’s botanical gardens and familiar house plants helped supply his imagined vegetation. Look at the sharply described leaves and their overlapping shapes. They create a crowded space around the animal, while the repeated slant of the rain gives the whole scene one direction of movement. The precise surfaces and unusual depth make the forest feel both convincing and invented. Rousseau took his work seriously despite ridicule from some viewers. Others among the artists and writers of his time admired it. The tiger’s uncertain situation still gives the carefully assembled jungle something unresolved to hold our attention.