A Walk in the Park

Look at the figures. Don’t their poses and their scale strike you as a little strange?

That is because Rousseau never received formal training in painting, so he never learned things like perspective or human proportion. He painted the people remarkably small, yet he still took care to render the folds of their clothing and other fine details.

It is a distinctive mode of expression that was possible precisely because Rousseau had no formal training.

Perhaps this singular quality is one of the reasons so many people came to love Rousseau.