La vela rosa

This is a small thing, barely bigger than a postcard: a pink candle and a little drapery, painted by Henri Rousseau around 1908, two years before he died. Rousseau is remembered for his enormous invented jungles, so a quiet still life like this is easy to walk past. In his lifetime the Paris critics mostly laughed at him, the self-taught customs clerk who painted as if no one had ever taught him the rules. The turn came after his death. In 1930 Duncan Phillips, who had opened the first museum of modern art in the United States, bought this small candle for his collection in Washington, where it has hung ever since.