Tropical Forest with Monkeys

Rousseau's tropics came from imagination, books, and Paris's botanical displays. The self-taught painter exhibited alongside the avant-garde, including the Fauves. Signac, Apollinaire, and Brancusi helped sustain his reputation after his death. The invented forest appealed to artists exploring alternatives to academic naturalism.

A dark monkey peers through leaves. Its small face emerges within nearly continuous vegetation.

Red blossoms cluster across the foreground. Their repeated bright motif divides broad green areas.

A brown monkey sits at the lower right. Animals at different levels let the forest's inhabitants be discovered gradually.

Orange flowers rise among fern leaves. Rousseau freely combines observed plants into an imagined environment.

Pale sky remains above the dense greenery. The narrow opening completes the tightly packed plant world.

In 1905 Rousseau exhibited with the Fauves. His career developed outside conventional academic training, supported by younger artists and writers. This late painting belongs to the imagined jungles they had come to value.