Portrait of the second wife of the artist

Rousseau's portrait of his second wife Joséphine around 1900 is a tender record of domestic life in the Plaisance district of Paris where the couple lived frugally after his retirement from the customs service. Joséphine Noury, whom he married in 1899, appears solemn and dignified, dressed with modest propriety. Now held at the Musée Picasso — a fitting home given Picasso's famous 1908 banquet in Rousseau's honor and his personal collection of the Douanier's work — the portrait demonstrates how Rousseau elevated ordinary subjects to a formal gravity usually reserved for official commissions.

The figure is frontal and still, set against a plain background that allows no atmospheric distraction. Rousseau's characteristic even illumination eliminates strong shadows, and his palette is sober — dark dress, pale face — giving the portrait a quality somewhere between a photograph and a medieval icon.