THE WORLD OF HENRI ROUSSEAU - USED COLL/ART

• title: The World of Henri Rousseau

• Author: Yann le Pichon (Translated by Joachim Neugroschel)

• Publisher: The Viking Press / A Studio Book, New York (Printed in Switzerland)

• Publication Date / Printing: 1982 (First American Edition; original unclipped dust jacket showing the $75.00 issue price)

• Format: Heavy folio hardcover in pictorial dust jacket; 285 pages, loaded with full-color reproductions, comparative source illustrations, and archival documents.

• ISBN: 0-670-36691-9

Interesting Facts

• The "Jungle" Mystery Solved: For decades, popular lore claimed Henri Rousseau fought in the French expedition to Mexico, where he supposedly saw exotic tropical jungles firsthand. Yann le Pichon definitively shattered this myth. He revealed that Rousseau never left France; instead, he studied taxidermy specimens and botanical greenhouses at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, alongside popular illustrated children's journals like Bêtes Sauvages (Wild Beasts).

• Personal Connection to the Rousseau Family: Le Pichon discovered Rousseau's source material in a personal way: his childhood piano teacher was Jeanne Bernard-Rousseau, the painter's granddaughter. While waiting for lessons, she let him browse an album of animal drawings that had belonged to her grandfather.

• Cover Masterpiece: The dust jacket features Rousseau’s famous 1910 work The Dream (Le Rêve), depicting his Polish mistress Yadwigha reclining on a velvet sofa transported into a lush, moonlit jungle, now housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.