La Carriole du Père Junier

Rousseau owed money to his friend Claude Junier, a Paris greengrocer who bought vegetables at the market each morning and sold them from a cart. Junier had just acquired a horse he was proud of, named Rose, so the two men settled the debt with a painting. Everyone piled in. Junier holds the reins with his wife and family, the pets are all present, and Rousseau put himself into the scene as well, the older man in the straw hat. He worked from a photograph but changed things freely, dropping a tree and adjusting the dogs until three of them sit at odd, unmatched sizes across the road. Rousseau was self-taught and painted in the evenings after his job as a Paris customs clerk, which is why he is still nicknamed the Douanier.