h nothing beyond the loveliness contained in
them.

There is not once, anywhere, a striving of the mind in the work of
this simple man. It was a wealth of innocence that tinged all his
methods, and his pictures are as simple in their appeal as are the
declarations of Jacob Boehme--they are the songs of innocence and
experience of a nature for whom all the world was beautiful, and have
about them the element of song itself, a poetry that has not yet
reached the shaping of words. Who looks at the pictures of this true
and charming naif, will find nothing to wonder at beyond this extreme
simplicity, he had no prescribed attitude, no fixity of image that
characterizes every touch of school. He was taught only by nature and
consulted only her relationships and tendencies. There is never a
mistaking of that. Nature was his influence, and he saw with an
untrammelled eye the elemental shape of all things, and affixed no
falsity of feeling, or anything, to his forms which might have
detracted from their extreme simplicity. He had "first sight," first
contact with the image, and sought nothing else beyond this, and a
very direct correspondence with memories dictated all his efforts.

That Rousseau was musical, is shown in the natural grace of his
compositions, and his ideas were simple as the early songs of France
are simple, speaking of everyday things with simple heart and voice,
and he painted frankly what he saw in precisely the way he saw it. We,
who love richness and sobriety of tone, will never tire of Rousseau's
beautiful blacks and greys, and probably no one has excelled them for
delicacy of appreciation, and perfection of gradation. It will be long
before the landscapes will be forgotten, it will be long before the
exquisite portrait of the "Child with the Harlequin" will fade from
remembrance, we shall remember them all for their loveliness in
design, a gift which never failed him, no matter what the subject.
Simple arabesque, it was the jungle that taught him this, and therein
lay his special power, a genuine feeling for the richness of laces and
brocades in full and subdued tones, such as one would find in the
elaborate intricacies of tropical foliage, strange leaves intermingled
with parrots, monkeys, strange white lilies on high stalks, tigers
peering through highly ornate foliage and branches intertwined, all
excellently suggestive of that foreign land in which the mind wanders
and finds itself so much at home.