View of the Sèvres Bridge

Henri Rousseau

Oil on canvas

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

This enchanting 1908 oil on canvas depicts the Pont de Sèvres spanning the River Seine, with an aeroplane, a hot-air balloon, and an airship floating dreamily overhead — a celebration of the era's fascination with flight rendered in Rousseau's signature naive style, where flatness and childlike wonder replace conventional perspective. Henri Rousseau, known affectionately as "Le Douanier" (the customs officer), was a self-taught French Post-Impressionist who only began painting seriously in his forties, retiring at 49 to devote himself fully to art — and his experience as a toll collector gave him an intimate familiarity with the bridges and river passages around Paris. Despite being ridiculed by critics during his lifetime, Rousseau's work earned the deep admiration of avant-garde giants like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, who recognized his bold simplicity as revolutionary. Hanging this painting in your home brings a piece of early modernism's most joyful spirit — a luminous, storybook vision of Paris at the dawn of aviation, created by a man who proved that passion and vision matter more than formal training.