Boy on the Rocks

Henri Rousseau

National Gallery of Art

A pale-skinned boy with round, almost doll-like proportions sits on pointed rocks in front of a pale blue sky in this slightly stylized, vertical painting. The boy’s body and face are square to us. His dark hair is neatly parted to our right and combed smooth. He looks out with over-large, close-set, dark eyes under curved brows, a straight, adult-like nose, and wide, full pink lips. He has a round face, smooth, flushed cheeks, and a wide, cleft chin. He wears a black jacket that falls open over a skirt-like white garment painted with a black grid. His stockings are white with thin black stripes, and he wears ankle-high black boots. The craggy rocks on which he perches are painted with tones of peanut and ash brown. A strip of turquoise green beyond the rocks suggests a body of water under the blue sky. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “H. Rousseau.”