The Representatives of Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of Peace

Rousseau finished this in 1907, the year the great powers met at The Hague to talk about limiting war, and he painted his own version of that hope. Around a small figure of the French Republic, in her toga and red cap, he gathered the heads of the world's nations in sashes and uniforms, their flags on poles and a tame lion lying at the front. He was a self-taught man who had worked for years as a Paris customs clerk, and he laid the scene out with the flat, careful evenness that trained painters mocked. The young Picasso saw something real in it and bought this canvas, which is why it hangs today in the museum of his own collection.