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"marine landscape titled ""The Cliff"". Rousseau lived from 1844 to 1910 in France. He was a self taught painter who did not start painting intensively until he was 40 years old. From 1886 until his death, he exhibited every year at the Salon Des Independants. He painted the different colors one by one, first the blues and then the greens and so on. He also painted from the top to the bottom of the canvas. Towards the end of his life, his painting style showed no substantial changes, but it had developed into depicting imaginative, unrealistic worlds. The surrealist movement would later consider Rousseau as one for their forerunners. It is astonishing and impressive at the same time how this man from the working class and without any academic training was able to define a style of his own, and how he was immune against adopting anything from the avant-garde artists around him. From an outsider who finally got some limited acceptance, you would expect some eager readiness to absorb the styles of the established art world or to experiment with the trendy styles of his avant-garde comrades like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism or Cubism. This is what makes Henri Rousseau unique. The ordinary wood support is a beveled plank, probably from a piece of furniture, which Rousseau in his beginnings utilized along with many other unusual types of supports. The painting shows no signs of restoration. The sea scene represented in the painting does not have a reference in the works of Rousseau, but the finely traced ropes and the slender bow of the sailors recall the boat seen in the famous painting of Rousseau ""Myself - a Landscape Portrait"". The painting should be added to the very small number of known works from before 1886. The piece comes with a certificate of authenticity written by Dora Vallier in 1995. Mrs. Vallier who passed away just recently was known as a Rousseau expert and wrote the catalogue raissone on the artist. Site: 9.5""H x 13""W; Frame: 14.5""H x 18""W. Circa - pre 1886."