風景

Early in 1909 Rousseau stood in a Paris courtroom, charged with helping an acquaintance pass forged paper at the Banque de France. His lawyer's defence was the paintings themselves. He held one up to the jury and asked whether a man who painted like that could possibly have understood what a cheque was. It worked, and Rousseau walked out with a suspended sentence. He was in his sixties, living on a small pension from his years as a toll collector at the Paris customs gates, giving lessons in music and drawing, and painting modest things like this one, a stand of trees and a fence at the edge of the city. The jungles he is remembered for came out of the same rooms, worked up from the botanical gardens and illustrated books, never from travel. The museum dates this landscape between 1905 and 1910, and it reached Philadelphia in 1950 with the collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg.