Henri Rousseau – View of Montsouris Park, the Kiosk

View of Montsouris Park, the Kiosk, c. 1908–1910

Strollers along the bottom edge

A pale path runs across the bottom edge of the canvas, and several figures walk along it,
most of them seen from behind. At the far left a child in a red dress holds the hand of a
woman in dark blue with a white bonnet. Left of centre a woman in a plum dress and a large
hat trimmed with pink walks arm in arm with a man in a cream suit and a straw boater who
carries a cane. Right of centre are a man in grey with a straw hat and a cane and a figure in
a pink dress, and at the far right a man in cream and a straw hat.

The pavilion by the water

Behind the strollers stretches a dark green lawn, and behind that a dark sheet of water. On
a small mound at the water’s edge stands an open pavilion with a brown conical roof carried
on pale columns. The museum’s record tells us that the Parc Montsouris was one of four parks
that opened in Paris during the 1870s, and that it contained an artificial lake – and it is
that lake which is painted here.

Trees that close the scene

Behind the pavilion stands a row of slender poplars, dark green and set close together. At
the right edge rises a group of very tall trunks that run the whole height of the canvas and
shut the scene in like a wing of scenery. Pale sky shows only in patches between the crowns.
A comparably ordered park subject on our shelf is The Avenue in the Park at Saint-Cloud, and another Paris garden is Jardin du Luxembourg.

The flatness the museum noticed

The Barnes Foundation’s record points out that the scene is so flat that the figures in the
foreground look as though they are walking across a stage, with the landscape behind them
painted on a backdrop. It really can be seen: the strollers do not overlap the grass behind
them in any way, and their feet do not sink into the path. The museum adds that painters of
later generations admired exactly this sense of spatial dislocation.

The building with the chimneys

At the upper right, behind the trees, rises a large dark building with a row of chimneys
along its roofline. It is not named – neither by the museum nor by us – but it is the one
sign that the park is not in open country but inside a city. Because of it the green scene
reads as an island within Paris. A suburban subject in our series is Environs de Paris, and a still sheet
of water is The Canal.

The museum and the record

The original is held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia under accession number
BF570, under the title View of Montsouris Park, the Kiosk, in French
Vue du parc Montsouris, le kiosque. The museum records it as oil on canvas measuring
66 x 80 cm and dates it to about 1908-1910, that is to the last two years of Rousseau’s
life.

How we make this canvas

We make the picture as a hand-painted oil on canvas reproduction, to order and in the size
you choose. The flatness is the demanding part of this subject: the temptation is to give the
figures a shadow and so set them on the ground, but that would lose exactly what makes this
canvas particular. So they are painted without added shadows, precisely as in the original.
Because the work is done by hand, every copy differs a little from the last. The full range is in the Henri Rousseau gallery.