Les Joueurs de football

Rousseau spent most of his working life as a minor customs official in Paris, which earned him the nickname Le Douanier, the customs man. He took up painting seriously only in middle age and never trained, and it shows in the stiff, doll-like figures here. What he chose to paint, though, was thoroughly modern. Four men in striped jerseys play rugby, a sport the French had picked up from Britain a few decades earlier and were suddenly keen on. He sets them among neat autumn trees and lets them float in mid-bounce, all reaching for the same oval ball. He finished it in 1908, around the time a group of young avant-garde painters, Picasso among them, threw him a famous half-joking banquet.