Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), 1891

The print

Printed by theprintspace, the East London fine-art lab trusted by artists, galleries and museums. Each print is made to order on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, a heavyweight 308gsm paper made from 100% cotton, with a soft matte surface and a natural white tone, using archival pigment inks made to last for generations.

Photo Rag suits this painting especially well. Its matte cotton surface holds the layered greens and the fine silver streaks of rain without glare, so the jungle reads as paint, not as a glossy poster.

Sizes available:

50×40cm, 20×16″, fine art print, open edition
80×60cm, 31×24″, fine art print, open edition

Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.

The story

Rousseau was a clerk in the Paris customs office and a self-taught Sunday painter when he sent this canvas to the Salon des Indépendants in 1891, under the title Surpris! It was the first of around twenty jungle paintings that would make his name.

He invented every leaf. The plants mix ordinary house plants with tropical specimens from the Jardin des Plantes, and the tiger is a composite of stuffed specimens, magazine illustrations and the domestic cat. When it was finished, he laid a mesh of silver-grey strokes over the whole picture for rain.

Many visitors laughed. The young painter Félix Vallotton did not, calling the tiger “the alpha and omega of painting”. Rousseau later listed it as a tiger pursuing explorers, though none appear; dark patches in the grass may be prey he painted out. The original hangs in the National Gallery, London.