Portrait de l'artiste à la lampe

This little self-portrait, barely bigger than a postcard, hangs today in the Picasso museum in Paris, and that is no accident. Picasso admired Henri Rousseau and collected his work at a time when the art world still treated the self-taught painter as a joke. Rousseau had spent years as a Paris toll collector, painting in his spare time, which earned him the nickname 'le Douanier,' the customs man. Around 1902 he painted himself here shoulder-length in a plain black suit, a small oil lamp glowing beside him against a white curtain, and he made a matching portrait of his wife lit the same way. In 1908 Picasso threw a now-famous banquet in his Montmartre studio in Rousseau's honour, half tribute and half prank, and he kept Rousseau's pictures for the rest of his life.