Forêt vierge au soleil couchant

Rousseau built a whole world of jungles late in his life, and as far as anyone can tell he never left France to see one. He made them in Paris, out of long afternoons in the glasshouses of the botanical garden, out of the zoo and cheap illustrated books, then blew those potted plants up to the scale of a forest. He painted this one in 1909, near the end. A red sun sinks behind ranks of broad, flat leaves, every edge drawn with the same patient exactness, the light turning orange through the green. Critics had spent years laughing at how flat and stiff his pictures looked. He went on making them, and by now younger painters in Paris had begun to seek him out. He died the next year, in 1910.