The Sleeping Gypsy is created by Henri Rousseau at 1897. With a mysterious poetry, the lion visits the gypsy woman and her mandolin in this masterful composition that somehow employs hard lines and flattish perspectives to great advantage.
In The Sleeping Gypsy, Rousseau portrays an African gypsy in a desert wearing an Oriental costume. She lies beside an Italian stringed instrument and jar of water. These items each have significant importance to the cultures in which they belong. The Oriental frock and mandolin are all customary to their respective Asian and Italian cultures. However, Rousseau decides to mix them all together in his own painting.
Rousseau was largely a self-taught painter.Although he had ambitions of entering the academy, this was never realized. But the sharp colors, fantastic imagery, and precise outlines in his work derived from the style and subject matter of popular print culturestruck a chord with a younger generation of avant-garde painters.
Henri Rousseau's work continued to be derided by the critics up to and after his death in 1910, but he won a following among his contemporaries: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Paul Klee were all admirers of his work. Around 1908, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard purchased Surprised! and two other works from Rousseau, who had offered them at a rate considerably higher than the 190 francs he finally received. The painting was later purchased by the National Gallery, London in 1972 with a contribution from the billionaire philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg.