Luxembourg Gardens, Monument to Chopin

Rousseau painted this in 1909, the year before his death — making it one of his final works. He was a self-taught painter who spent most of his adult life as a customs toll collector in Paris, earning the nickname 'Le Douanier' (the customs officer), and only took up painting seriously in his forties. The Luxembourg Gardens, a short walk from where Rousseau lived in Montparnasse, was one of his favorite subjects. The monument to Chopin he depicted had only recently been unveiled in 1906, a memorial statue by sculptor Jacques Froment-Meurice. Although Rousseau was mocked by critics throughout his life for his flat, untrained style, he was championed by Picasso, Apollinaire, and other avant-garde figures, who recognized his work as a kind of visionary intensity that academic training could not produce. The painting is held at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.