Unpleasant Surprise (Mauvaise surprise)

Rousseau never saw a jungle. He was a Paris municipal toll-clerk who painted in his spare time, mocked by the critics, and his dense green wilds were built from the hothouse plants and stuffed animals of the city's botanical garden. He made this around 1900. A naked woman stands in that invented forest, a clawed bear rears up at her, and off to one side a hunter aims a rifle at the animal. By the logic of such a scene she ought to be terrified. Instead she only looks put out, as though the real intrusion were the hunter who has stumbled on her bathing. A cleaning not long ago brought back the sunset Rousseau had painted burning in the water behind her.