Henri Rousseau
"Jungle Scene with Setting Sun"
Students learned about the Naive style of Henri Rousseau, and about the way that he painted his many Jungle paintings. All of the grades followed up Rousseau's jungle paintings with art work. The different grades tackled different media, however. 1-3rd grade created oil pastel Tigers. The 4th grade made birdhouses with flowers painted on them, inspired by Rousseau's tropical flowers. The 5th graders made watercolors of flowers from a still life, as Rousseau would have done at the Arboretum. The 6th graders created "savage beasts" from clay. The 7th graders made a lovely grid drawing and oil pastel from another of Rousseau's works, "The Sleeping Gypsy" And the 8th graders used torn paper to create torn paper collages of flowers like the ones in Rousseau's Jungle.