Henri Rousseau, l’ambition de la peinture

The Musée de l’Orangerie is organizing, in collaboration with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, a monographic exhibition dedicated to the painter Henri Rousseau, bringing together major loans from international institutions. This co‑production opened in October 2025 in Philadelphia and is presented at the Musée de l’Orangerie from 25 March to 20 July 2026.

On this occasion, the Musée de l’Orangerie is the first institution to benefit from loans drawn from the Barnes Foundation’s collection, assembling a corpus of Rousseau works that passed through the hands of the dealer Paul Guillaume. This collaboration is an obvious one in the histories of the two institutions: Paul Guillaume, whose collection forms the core of the Musée de l’Orangerie, acted as intermediary for Albert Barnes in the purchase of his eighteen Rousseau paintings. Guillaume was himself a collector of the artist, reportedly owning as many as fifty works by Rousseau, according to the documentary albums preserved in the museum’s archives. Nine of these now belong to the Musée de l’Orangerie’s collection, to which a recent acquisition of two small portraits has been added. The exhibition and its catalogue will examine this collaboration between the Parisian dealer and the American collector, and more broadly the network of collectors and dealers in which the painter was situated during his lifetime. Some fifty works will be presented on this occasion, drawn from the collections of the two institutions and from key loans by European and American institutions, including The Sleeping Gypsy (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

The exhibition revisits the career of Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), his pictorial practice and his professional ambitions. Having come to Paris from his native Mayenne, he decided at the age of 49 to retire from his post at the octroi to devote himself entirely to painting. The artist diversified genres and techniques to make a place for himself on the Parisian art scene: compositions submitted to the Salon des Indépendants, responses to public commissions to decorate town halls in the Île‑de‑France, portraits commissioned by his circle, landscapes intended for sale, and more intimate self‑portraits. The exhibition aims to move beyond the legends surrounding the name “Douanier Rousseau” in order to study his artistic trajectory in depth. Thematic sections will address the materiality of the works and situate them within the context of the modern art market in which Paul Guillaume and Albert Barnes took part.

Bringing two major collections of the artist into dialogue with works from international public collections offers the opportunity to study a large corpus from the perspective of materiality. In this respect, recent scientific analyses conducted by the Barnes Foundation shed light on the artist’s painting practice. In parallel, the Orangerie’s holdings have been studied by the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) to complement this body of research. Within the exhibition route, a digital installation will highlight these scientific analyses, offering the public a more tangible entry into the study of the works’ materiality and revealing Rousseau’s creative process.