Paysage d'Alger

This is one of Rousseau's earliest known paintings, made in 1880, when he was in his mid-thirties and working as a clerk at a Paris toll gate. It shows the port of Algiers, by then 50 years into French rule, with armed nomads resting among their camels in the foreground. Rousseau had never been to Algeria, or anywhere near it. He built the whole scene from engravings and prints, the way he would later build his famous jungles out of hothouse plants and picture books rather than real travel. Everything is set down in the same flat, deliberate manner, each camel and figure placed as plainly as in a diagram. The painting surfaced at auction in 2012 and went into a private collection.