The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897
Henri Rousseau
Oil on canvas · 129.5 x 200.7 cm
A lion sniffs at a sleeping traveller under an impossibly calm desert moon.
Under a still moon a lion sniffs a sleeping musician in the desert, her striped robe glowing. Rousseau's dreamlike 1897 scene, painted with untrained, hypnotic clarity, hovers between innocence and menace — a quiet forerunner of Surrealism.
What you're looking at
There are no footprints. Not hers, not the lion's — the sand is completely unmarked, which is one of several reasons the scene reads as a dream rather than an event. Rousseau was a customs officer who taught himself to paint, and he tried to sell this to the mayor of his home town for a few hundred francs, describing it in a letter. The mayor said no.
On a Frame TV
About 1.54:1, so the clean crop takes a trim from top and bottom and the composition survives it. Flat colour, hard edges and a dark ground with bright stripes — it reads clearly at any size and in any light.
Museum of Modern Art
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Henri Rousseau.
