Open to the public on Sunday, Oct. 19, the Barnes Foundation’s “Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets” exhibit is not to be missed.
From the moment you enter the Barnes, the atmosphere is serene and peaceful. Throughout the museum, the careful curation to evoke thoughtfulness and absorption from visitors is obvious. This quality remains present throughout the Rousseau exhibit as it is organized in a sequence of rooms that gently tell a story of Rousseau’s ambitions, struggles, and fantasies—each room offering a thematic lens into his evolving style as a painter. Each room in the gallery feels coherent in tone, while the transitions between them draw you deeper into Rousseau’s inner world.
One of the exhibition’s first themes is Rousseau as a painter for hire—commissioned portraits, small landscapes, and works designed to appeal to clients. In these rooms, he situates himself in a more conventional world: capturing likenesses, offering pleasing views, and demonstrating that he could work within the expectations of patrons. What is most striking about even his landscapes, however, is that his post-impressionist style remains so apparent and distinctly his own.
Another room focuses mostly on his efforts to win recognition through public competitions. Between 1890 and 1902, Paris held contests to decorate municipal buildings such as town halls, and Rousseau aspired to secure major civic commissions. Though he never succeeded in winning those high-profile awards, the paintings in this section speak clearly to his ambitions and sense of national identity. Some are overtly patriotic; others look inward, to suburban scenes and everyday life, as Rousseau sought to receive public recognition for his work.
His obsession with having his paintings in municipal buildings, however, is somewhat ironic, as Rousseau himself only enlisted as a soldier to avoid a prison sentence and retired as early as he could from his job as a toll collector to become a painter. These early works reveal the tension at the heart of Rousseau’s career: how to balance external expectations with a singular internal vision.
A central revelation of the exhibition is how Rousseau built his visual worlds in paintings. In correspondence with American painter Max Weber, he admitted that his distortions of size were intentional. When asked whether he oversized animals, Rousseau reportedly replied, “it must be that way.” Throughout the exhibit, it is obvious that he did not care to ensure exact likenesses. This set Rousseau apart from many of the famous Parisian painters before him.
His inclination toward imaginative scale is especially visible in his jungle paintings, where wildlife looms large, enveloping human or animal figures, blurring the boundary between subject and environment. The final rooms of the exhibit are devoted to Rousseau’s jungle paintings—his most famous and enigmatic works. Here, the exhibit’s pacing and space allow you to absorb his lush, uncanny worlds.
Because Rousseau disregards conventional perspective and proportion, his scenes feel simultaneously intimate and vast. Foliage presses forward; animals dominate; human figures shrink beneath the canopy. The viewer is made to feel surrounded by an otherworldly wilderness.
In his works depicting the jungle, scale is elastic. The greenery seems to envelope human and animal subjects alike. It is as if Rousseau invites us to imagine being swallowed into his vision—invaded by the wild.
The exhibition presents a new way to view Rousseau’s paintings. Conservators at the Barnes have conducted new analyses—revealing hidden layers beneath some paintings, new pigment studies, and insights into Rousseau’s working method.
Importantly, this show unites the two largest holdings of Rousseau—18 paintings from the Barnes and 11 from the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.
Curators Christopher Green from the Courtauld Institute and Nancy Ireson from the Barnes Foundation have structured the exhibition so that the arc of Rousseau’s career is felt, not forced. The show makes clear how Rousseau adapted to market pressures, competitions, and patronage, while still nurturing his own imaginative faculties.
The exhibition also illuminates Rousseau’s place in the broader story of modern art. Though often dismissed or marginalized in his lifetime, he influenced avant-garde luminaries such as Picasso and Matisse, who saw in his directness and vision a model for renewed freedom in painting.
Be sure to experience Rousseau’s work in this immersive storytelling space while it remains on view from Oct. 19, 2025, to Feb. 22, 2026.