Henri Rousseau – View of the Fortifications to the Left of the Gate of Vanves

View of the Fortifications to the Left of the Gate of Vanves – a hand-painted reproduction

The upper half of the scene is a pale grey-lilac sky, almost featureless, with a faint
pink tinge at the very top left. At the left a long pale stone wall with a flat coping runs
from the lower left corner up towards the middle, and above it a green grassy bank carries a
row of low trees with pale foliage along its crest. Near the centre stands a tall dark wooden
frame with rungs, like a ladder stood upright and leaning slightly; immediately to its right
a taller pale grey post carries a horizontal arm at its top, projecting to the left. Below
them open green ground slopes gently away. On it two small figures stand together, one in a
long red garment and one in dark, and lower to the right a larger figure – a man in a dark
coat and a broad dark hat – walks along a pale sandy path beside a dark hedge. At the right
rises a row of tall slender trees with pale grey-green crowns, and behind the dark hedge
beneath them stands a row of low pale-fronted buildings with red and dark brown roofs. At the
lower left is the dark signature Henri Rousseau.

A painting that spends its colour sparingly

The whole canvas is silvery and low in colour: sky, wall, grass and crowns all move within
a narrow band of greys and pale greens. That is exactly why two places catch fire – the red
garment on the grass and the red roofs behind the hedge. This is not an absence of colour but
a rationing of it, and the opposite case in this group is Outskirts of Paris, where the same fringe of the
city is painted fuller and warmer.

Two objects we do not name

Two constructions stand on the grass, drawn precisely and left unexplained: a wooden frame
with rungs, and a grey post with a horizontal arm. What they were we do not claim – the
record says nothing about them, and the shapes alone cannot carry a function. That silence is
part of the effect: the scene looks like the edge of a city, where things stand without
anyone explaining why. A related reticence appears in Scene in Bagneux on the Outskirts of Paris and in Sawmill, Outskirts of Paris, where work and
buildings likewise stand without a story attached.

What it means on the wall

The original measures 31 cm x 41 cm and is small and landscape. Because the colour range
is narrow, the canvas stays quiet even at larger sizes and does not take over a wall; at
small sizes the three figures and the row of roofs collapse into dots, so wider measurements
suit it better. We do not reproduce canvases at the original measurement; you choose the size
for your wall. For a more colourful view of the same surroundings, see Environs de Paris.

How a hand-painted reproduction is made

Every canvas is painted by hand in oils, to order, in the size you choose. The painter
works from a high-resolution photograph of the original, layer by layer, so that the red
garment on the grass, the rungs of the wooden frame and the row of roofs stay legible at
smaller sizes too. Because this is hand work, two canvases of the same size always differ
slightly; that is not a fault but the difference between a painting and a print. Prices on
this page start at 155 EUR for the smallest size.