Despite some glaring disproportions,
exaggerations, and banalities, Rousseau's paintings have a mysterious poetry.
Boy on the Rocks (55 x 46 cm) is both funny and alarming. The rocks
seem to be like a series of mountain peaks and the child effortlessly dwarves
them. His wonderfully stripy garments, his peculiar mask of a face, the uncertainty
as to whether he is seated on the peaks or standing above them, all comes across
with a sort of dreamlike force. Only a child can so bestride the world with such
ease, and only a childlike artist with a simple, naïve vision can understand this
elevation and make us see it as dauntingly true.
