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Why did the mayor of Laval refuse to buy The Sleeping Gypsy?
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Henri Rousseau
Myself: Portrait-Landscape, oil on canvas by Henri Rousseau, 1890; in the National Gallery, Prague. 146 Ă 113 cm.
When Henri Rousseau offered to sell his 1897 painting, The Sleeping Gypsy, to his hometown of Laval, the mayor refused the purchase because he regarded the work as childish.12
While Rousseau intended the painting to be a tribute to the town, his unique styleâcharacterized by simplified forms and a lack of conventional technical skillâwas often misunderstood and ridiculed by his contemporaries as immature. It was only later that his imaginative use of space and symbol gained the admiration of Modernist artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.12