Tropical Forest with Monkeys, 1910

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 brings out the soft, layered greens and the warm fur of the monkeys, with no glare to flatten the depth of the leaves.

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

By 1910 Rousseau, now sixty-six, was finally being taken seriously. He sold several paintings that year through the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard, and in 1908 Picasso had thrown a banquet in his honour.

This was one of his final jungles. Five monkeys, grey and rust-orange, climb and swing through a lush forest. In the middle, two hold green sticks with what look like lines dangling from them, as if they had gone fishing. Many of Rousseau’s animals have something human about them, and here the joke is gentle.

He died that September after an infection. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the verse that Constantin Brancusi carved on his tombstone.

The painting is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, part of the John Hay Whitney Collection.