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To celebrate the baby 1903
Kunstmuseum Winterthur
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Henri Rousseau
The Football Players 1908
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While Rousseau often depicted the savagery of the jungle, he also produced a number of works featuring monkeys that exude a more playful spirit. Rousseau's monkeys are cheeky rascals, but the paintings themselves are similarly mischievous. Supposedly far from civilization, the monkeys in The Merry Jesters (1906) play with backscratchers and a milk bottle, while Tropical Forest with Monkeys (1910) shows two primates out with fishing rods. The sheer oddity of these scenes made one critic wonder if he really had seen a painting like The Merry Jesters, or if he had imagined it. The human appearance of the monkeys was especially unnerving for viewers. While contemporary science insisted on the difference between the 'savage' and the 'civilized', Rousseau's paintings seemed to merge the two categories. For avant-garde admirers, such works were a cause for celebration, offering a release from the trappings of conventional behaviour.

The implicit comparison between man and primate becomes clearer in The Football Players (1908), which shares the sense of movement and playfulness of the monkey paintings. The scene is especially joyous, and the characteristic quirks and oddities of the painting only add to the sense of fun.

The theme of play appears again in To Celebrate the Baby (1903). Although the golden-haired child is a classic symbol of innocence, the figure seems bulky and disproportionate, looming like a giant that dwarfs the trees behind it. The jerking marionette suggests a deeper allegorical significance, a grotesque image of adulthood that contrasts with the free and happy child.