Deroy Isidore-Laurent Laval, view of the cathedral and the Beucheresse gate
Cliché Musée de Vieux-Château, Laval
Date |
Life |
Times |
| 1844 | • Henri-Julien-Félix Rousseau is born to petit-bourgeois parents on May 21 in Laval, a market town in North-West France. | 
Deroy Isidore-Laurent Laval, view of the cathedral and the Beucheresse gate Cliché Musée de Vieux-Château, Laval  enlarge |
| 1847 | • Richard Burton's expedition to the equatorial lakes of Africa. | |
| 1848 | • Enters local school.
• Rousseau is reasonably educated, studying until the age of seventeen. |
• Republican Revolution in France: the 'June Days'.
• Start of the Second Republic. |
| 1852 | • Start of the Second Empire. | |
| 1855 | • Paris World's Fair. | |
| 1861 | • Rousseau's family moves to Angers. | |
| 1862 | • France takes control of Saigon, Mytho and Bien-Hoa. | |
| 1863 | • The artist avoids compulsory military service and finds work as a scribe for a local solicitor.
• He cheats his employer out of a small sum of money and some stamps and enrols in the military, perhaps to evade punishment. |
• France colonises Cambodia.
• The review Le Petit Journal is founded. |
| 1864 | • Rousseau spends one month in prison for his crime. | |
| 1868 | • Marries Clémence Boitard, his landlord's daughter.
• Rousseau's father dies during the same year and the artist moves to Paris. |
Photo of Clémence Boitard, Rousseau’s first wife Private collection, copyright unknown enlarge |
| 1870 | • Birth of Rousseau's first son who dies within months. | • Start of Franco-Prussian War. Napoléon III abdicates. • Formation of the German state. |
| 1871 | • Rousseau secures a job as a clerk in the Paris toll service (the Octroi), imposing duty on goods entering the city.
• This job earns him the widely-used nickname, 'Le Douanier', meaning 'the customs officer'. |
• Siege of Paris (1870-1).
Henri Rousseau The Customs Post 1890 The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London enlarge |
| 1872 | • Rousseau's son, Antoine, is born. | |
| 1873 | ||
| 1874 | • Expeditions into the Congo by Stanley begin (end 1877).
• First Impressionist exhibition in Paris. |
|
| 1875 | • Birth of the Third Republic.
• Indian Empire proclaimed. |
|
| 1876 | • Birth of daughter, Julia. | |
| 1877 | • First 'living' exhibition in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris. | |
| 1878 | • Paris World's Fair. | |
| 1879 | ||
| 1880 | 
Rousseau as a young man, c.1880 Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris enlarge |
• Significant education reforms in France take place between 1880 and 1882. |
| 1881 | • First of the two Boer War conflicts.
• The Bardo Treaty: the French colonise Tunisia. |
