Sawmill, Outskirts of Paris - Henri Rousseau (ca. 1893–1895)

Henri Rousseau

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small but evocative oil on canvas depicts a sawmill set amid lush trees and foliage on the periphery of Paris, rendered in Rousseau's characteristically flat, meticulous style. The composition conveys the quiet, semi-rural character of the Parisian suburbs in the late nineteenth century, and keen observers have noted the distant silhouette of the Eiffel Tower nestled within the background foliage. Henri Rousseau, known as 'Le Douanier,' was a self-taught French Post-Impressionist painter who worked without formal academic training, developing a Naïve style distinguished by its sharp outlines, unnatural colors, and absence of conventional perspective. Painted around the time of his retirement from the Paris customs office in 1893, this work belongs to an important series of topographical suburban views that complement his celebrated jungle scenes and reveal his sustained engagement with the landscape immediately surrounding Paris.