Landschaft mit vier Fischern

On 9 January 1909 Rousseau stood in the assize court of the Seine, charged over a bank fraud that a friend, a clerk at the Banque de France, had drawn him into. His lawyer argued in court that a man who painted the way Rousseau painted could not have understood what a cheque was, and held up one of his canvases to prove it. Rousseau left with a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 100 francs, and carried on with the year's work, pictures like this quiet stretch of water with four anglers on the bank. Riverbanks on the edge of Paris had been his subject for 20 years, since the days when he collected tolls at the city gates and painted on Sundays, which is where the nickname Le Douanier came from.