In 1905, The Hungry Lion was presented to the public at the Salon d’Automne, an annual alternative to the official Salon of Paris, alongside violently colourful new works by a group of artists including Matisse and Derain. One critic was so shocked by the intensity of their paintings that he called these younger artists “fauves”, or wild beasts – inspired, perhaps, by the imagery of Rousseau’s picture.

Yet surprisingly, given his subsequent reputation as the godfather of modern art (or, as one artist and critic put it, “the alpha and omega of painting”), Rousseau was entirely self-taught.

The sublime and the ridiculous

Born in 1844 in the French town of Laval, Rousseau led a mostly unremarkable life. For more than two decades, he worked in the Parisian customs service, earning himself the half-mocking nickname of “le douanier” (the customs officer). Why he decided to take up painting around the age of 40 remains obscure – perhaps it was to while away the boring hours of inactivity that were part of the job.

In 1886, though, out of the blue, he showed four astonishing paintings at the Salon des Indépendants, the principal exhibition venue for the Post-Impressionists. Although they were rubbished, and much of his later work was ridiculed too (“Backs jostle in front of his entries, and the place rocks with laughter,” one critic wrote), Rousseau doggedly submitted work to the Salon every year for the rest of his life, except 1899 and 1900.

“Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet, with a blindfold over his eyes,” one critic spat. Another remarked, in 1889, that he had “never seen anything more grotesque” than Rousseau’s portraits and Van Gogh’s Starry Night (which, in retrospect, hardly seems like bad company to be keeping). Rousseau pasted all of his negative reviews into a scrapbook.

King of the jungle

It is true that by the smooth, sleek standards of 19th Century academic painting, Rousseau’s pictures looked rough and rude. His figures and compositions were awkward and clunky, he had no sure grasp of perspective, his use of colour – especially black – was idiosyncratic, and he was incapable of painting feet. Look at the strangely contorted limbs of his stiff Football Players of 1908: as an artist, he could seem naive in the extreme.