Die Mühle von Alfort

Henri Rousseau spent his working years as a minor toll official on the edge of Paris, checking goods coming into the city, and he painted only on Sundays. That job put him among exactly this kind of place: the industrial fringe southeast of the capital, along the Marne, where the real Moulin d'Alfort stood. He renders the mill with a self-taught flatness that the Paris art world mocked for years, every leaf and every reflection set down with the same patient clarity. A single small figure stands in a boat on the still canal. Across the wall of the main building he has lettered the name itself, MOULIN D'ALFORT, in plain block capitals.