The Family

Rousseau painted the people around him the way he painted everything, straight on and unsmiling, each face turned to meet you like figures holding still for a photograph. This family group dates from the 1890s, and it is often used to argue against the easy idea that Rousseau simply could not draw. Look at the baby. It scowls out of the picture with a thoroughly grumpy face, a real and particular sulk that he plainly watched and set down without softening it at all.