The Dream

Henri Rousseau

Oil on canvas

Museum of Modern Art

The Dream (Le Rêve) depicts a nude figure, Yadwigha, reclining on a velvet divan set incongruously within a lush, moonlit jungle teeming with exotic flora and fauna—lions, a lioness, birds, monkeys, an elephant, and a shadowy snake charmer playing a flute. Rousseau, a self-taught French painter who worked as a customs official before devoting himself to art, constructed his imaginary jungle scenes not from direct experience abroad but from visits to the Jardin des Plantes and the Paris Museum of Natural History. His characteristic flat forms, vivid colour, and naïve perspective place the work squarely within the tradition of Naïve art and Primitivism, while the dreamlike juxtaposition of the domestic and the exotic anticipates Surrealism. Completed in 1910, the last year of Rousseau's life, it is considered his masterwork and remains one of the most celebrated paintings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.