HENRI JULIEN FÉLIX ROUSSEAU (Laval, France, 1844 - Paris, 1910)."Le Baron Daumesnil".Green patinated bronze.Casting test, copy H.C. (Edition of 5 copies, including 2 H.C). Post-mortem edition.Signed H. Rousseau. With the stamp of the Georges Rudier Foundry (Paris).Work illustrated in "Le Monde du Douanier Rousseau" by Yann Le Pichon. Paris: Robert Laffont Editions, 1981. p. 226. Also in “Le Surréalisme et la peinture” by André Bretón. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. pp. 372, 373.It has been exhibited in "Das Naive Bild Der Welt", Hannover, 1961. Also in "Sculpture de peintres" Paris, 1962.Attached is a copy of the certificate of authenticity issued by the Gorges Rudier Foundry and additional documentation.Measurements: 37.5 x 9 x 9 cm.Round sculpture representing Pierre Daumesnil. He was a French general volunteer at the time of the French Revolution, first served as a private in the wars in Italy and Egypt and became a guide of Napoleon Bonaparte, squadron leader of the imperial guard in 1808. He lost a leg to a cannon shot at the Battle of Wagram, for which he was nicknamed "wooden leg", a feature visible in the present sculpture.Nicknamed Douanier -aduanero- Rousseau, the painter became known in the Parisian artistic environment in the mid 1880s, when his work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, a place where the works of great post-impressionist artists such as Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin, among others, were exhibited. Due to his humble origins he was not able to train academically as an artist, however, with discipline and effort he learned in a self-taught way, managing to develop his talent without specialized training. While working he became interested in poetry, music and art, passionate about these, but unable to afford his studies. Since the end of the 1870s he began to paint and draw, later he came into contact with the Parisian artistic environment, attracting the attention of some post-impressionist artists. In 1886, his first known work "The Carnival of the Animals" was exhibited, in which the influence of academic painting and its detailed representation is perceived, in this one he used intense colors and moderate tonalities; this application of the colors is one of the key characteristics in his works. In the 1890s, he decided to focus on his artistic production despite the fact that his work had been ridiculed. Even so, he began to gain the attention of the public and impressionist and post-impressionist artists after the publication of a series of works in which the naïve style, of which he is one of the greatest exponents, is reflected. Rousseau is well known today for his particular landscape works, the first of which was Surprised! (Tiger in a Tropical Storm) and the second "The Dream"; both are large format and demonstrate his affectionate attention to detail as well as his surprising freshness of vision and overflowing imagination. The rest of his work ranges from the showy humor of "The Soccer Players" to the mesmerizing and mysterious beauty of "The Sleeping Gypsy". He began to be recognized immediately after his death for the open struggle he had unleashed against the Academy. Rousseau thus became a symbol of the struggle and opened the door of art history to primitive artists. His works attracted the attention of the impressionist Degas and the primitive post-impressionist Gauguin, among other artists of the same artistic milieu. In the early years of the twentieth century Rousseau's work was widely admired and recognized, among his most prominent admirers were Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso. Precisely in 1908, both organized a legendary banquet in his honor where Picasso told Rousseau: "We are the two greatest artists of our time: you in the Egyptian way, and I in the modern way".