Henri Rousseau

Celebrated naïf painter. Signac and Jarry were the first to encourage him — Jarry, also from Laval, had met him around the time he retired to paint full-time. Delaunay and Apollinaire became friends and supporters. Picasso hosted a famous banquet for him, in some mixture of admiration and jest: Apollinaire and Laurencin were there (Rousseau had painted them, as he also did his friend Loti), also Jacob, Salmon and others. Léger, admiring his approach to painting, visited his studio many times. After his burial in a pauper’s grave, Delaunay and Picasso paid for a headstone, into which Brancusi carved Apollinaire’s elegy.