Massacre of the Innocents

Massacre of the Innocents, painted in 1847 and now in The Mesdag Collection in The Hague, is among the most unusual works in Rousseau's oeuvre — a biblical subject by a painter best known for landscapes without narrative content. The Massacre of the Innocents, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew, depicts Herod's slaughter of infant boys in Bethlehem and had a long and distinguished history in European painting from Bruegel to Rubens and Poussin. For Rousseau, who built his reputation on the assertion that landscape itself could be morally and spiritually meaningful without recourse to religious or mythological subject matter, this excursion into narrative painting is puzzling. It may represent a commercial or experimental deviation from his usual practice. The Mesdag Collection, assembled by the Dutch marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, contained numerous Barbizon school works, and this unusual canvas joined that collection alongside more characteristic Rousseau landscapes.

The narrative subject required Rousseau to engage with figure painting in a way his landscape work did not demand, and the figures here are rendered with less confidence than his trees and skies. The outdoor setting — a landscape backdrop for the biblical event — gives Rousseau the opportunity to deploy his atmospheric skills in a supporting role.