Light on (in) Canvas

Anent the Douanier:

The light that fills Rousseau’s paintings  from no apparent source or direction  holds everything in peaceful equilibrium. …

Rousseau painted only three lights:  high noon, moonlight, and the uniform floodlighting of a photographer’s studio. …

The formal effects of his light  guard the enigma of his work, the feeling that we cannot fathom   its sheer simplicity. …

The most singular quality of his work arises from the steady light that floods his compositions  and hushes them  as the world can be hushed  only by high noon and by moonlight.

-- Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years:  The Origins of the Avan-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (1955), p. 105-6

Note:  All that Shattuck says about the formal qualities of  these paintings  is no doubt true.  But there is a Chance-the-gardener aspect to Rousseau, which should caution us against reading too much into “the enigma of his work, the feeling that we cannot fathom its sheer simplicity.”  Similar remarks apply to Utrillo.   The life (if we can call it that) and work  of Henry Darger, are the final caveat against taking a master of composition as anything but a visual guide.  It represents Asperger’s Esthetics only.