Although stories abounded about Rousseau’s supposed military adventures in the jungles of Mexico, he never actually left France. Instead, the exotic scenes he depicted were largely based on the foliage and animals he saw on his regular pilgrimages to the Paris Natural History Museum, and to the botanical gardens and zoo, known as the Jardin des Plantes, that surrounded it. Rousseau was also an eager scavenger of images from a variety of printed sources, which he adapted and transformed in his paintings. Perhaps his most important source was an album entitled Bêtes Sauvages ('Wild Beasts'), which included around 200 photographs of animals in captivity, many of them in the Jardin des Plantes.

Cover of Le Petit Journal, 29 Sep 1895 Benoît Lardiéres, Paris Photo: Karin Maucotel enlarge		Bêtes Sauvages ('Wild Beasts'), album cover illustration. Musée de Vieux-Château, Laval enlarge
Le Petit Journal was a popular magazine in Rousseau’s day. He drew heavily on its illustrations of animals and exotic scenes.		This album, translated as 'Wild Beasts', included around 200 photographs of animals in captivity. Many of Rousseau’s monkeys, lions, gazelles and antelopes can be traced directly to this book.
Post card of Emmanuelle Frémiet, Dénicheur d'oursons Benoît Lardiéres, Paris. Photo: Karin Maucotel enlarge		Post card of the Jardin d'Hiver ('Winter Garden') at the Jardin des Plantes Benoît Lardiéres, Paris. Karin Maucotel enlarge
Like Rousseau, Emmanuelle Frémiet also studied animals at the Jardins des Plantes in the process of making sculptures like this one.		Rousseau paid many visits to the glass houses of the Jardin des Plantes. However, the foliage in his paintings is highly stylised and adapted to his own visual language, as in his work, The Dream 1910. He once declared: 'When I go into the glass houses and I see the strange plants of exotic lands, it seems to me that I enter into a dream'.
Post card of the interior of the Zoological Galleries; the monkey gallery Photo: Tate / Rodney Tidnam enlarge		Henri Rousseau Tropical Forest with Monkeys 1910 National Gallery of Art, Washington enlarge
Rousseau diligently studied the stuffed animals on display at the Natural History Museum, but applied artistic freedom when it came to his paintings, regularly transplanting species into non-native environments. This display of stuffed gorillas is reminiscent of some of the poses in paintings such as Tropical Forest with Monkeys 1910.
Diorama of a lion attacking an antelope Collection Museum National Histoire Naturelle. Photo from exhibition at Tate Modern © Tate enlarge		Henri Rousseau The Hungry Lion Throws itself on the Antelope 1905 Fondation Beyeler, Basel. Photo: © Fondation Beyeler enlarge
The Hungry Lion 1905 was based on this display of a lion attacking an antelope from the Paris Natural History Museum.
Photograph of flamingos from Bêtes Sauvages ('Wild Beasts') Photo: Cliché Musée de Vieux-Château, Laval enlarge		Illustration of Animal Artists in the Jardin des Plantes from l'Illustration August 1902 enlarge
This photograph of flamingos is from the album Bêtes Sauvages ('Wild Beasts') that Rousseau owned. In his painting The Flamingos 1907, the flamingos inhabit a dream-like scene, dwarfed by impossibly tall, exotic blooms.		Rousseau was one of numerous artists who made studies of the animals in the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes.
Photograph of bananas growing © Dave G. Houser/CORBIS enlarge		Henri Rousseau Fight between a Tiger and a Buffalo 1908 The Cleveland Museum of Art, Photo: © CMA enlarge
Rousseau must have seen banana plants in the tropical greenhouses at the Jardin des Plantes. Even though he would have observed that bananas grow upwards in real life, in paintings such as Combat of a Tiger and Buffalo 1908 he shows them growing downwards.