Portrait de Frumence Biche en civil

Frumence Biche was an ordinary man Rousseau knew around 1891, and here he sits in his everyday jacket, hands settled in his lap. Rousseau was still nobody in the art world then. By day he collected tolls at the gates of Paris, which is why people called him le Douanier, the customs man, and he painted in his spare hours with no training at all. It shows, and he did not seem to mind. He gives Biche a flat, straight-on gaze, the features built up slowly and a little stiffly, the way a patient amateur or a signpainter would work. Rousseau painted this same man a second time, standing at full length in his police uniform. In this one there is no uniform and almost no setting, so everything rests on the plain, serious face.