Henri Rousseau’s ‘Sleeping Gypsy’: a new interpretation
The Sleeping Gypsy (1897) by Henri Rousseau (1844–1910)
Many 19th-century French writers were born in tropical countries—Heredia in Cuba, Lautréamont, Laforgue and Supervielle in Uruguay, Perse in Guadaloupe—and came to France. Henri Rousseau never left France but painted the tropics. On the frame of Sleeping Gypsy (1897, Museum of Modern Art, New York), his most moving and mysterious painting, Rousseau inscribed, “Although the predatory animal is wild, it hesitates to leap upon its victim, who has fallen fast asleep from exhaustion.” He also described his painting in a letter of July l898, when trying to sell it to his hometown: “A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic. The scene is set in a completely arid desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental costume.” He calls the subject both Negress and Gypsy, and calls the lute a mandolin. Neither account explains why the lion, scenting its potential prey, doesn’t leap upon and devour its victim.
In his Preface to the sale catalogue of October 1926, Jean Cocteau observed: “We are in the desert. The gypsy lying in the middle ground is lost in dream, or has been carried away by a dream, so far away—like the river in the background—that a lion behind her sniffs at her without being able to reach her [though he does touch her shoulder]. Indeed, the lion, the river, may even be the sleeping woman’s dreams. Such peace! The mystery believes in itself and stands naked, revealed. The gypsy sleeps, her eyes closed. How to describe this motionless flowing figure, this river of forgetfulness?” Cocteau noted the desert, dream, lion and river, stressed the peaceful and poetic quality, but did not offer a clear interpretation.
Modern critics have also been baffled by this elusive painting. Cornelia Stabenow (1994) follows Rousseau and mistakenly says the Gypsy’s lute is a mandolin and weirdly calls the head cloth her “pink locks of hair”. Stabenow asks, without answering, many questions about the possible meaning: “What is the source of the wind that lifts the lion’s mane in the still moonlit night? [irrelevant]. Is the sharp contour of the bank not a protective screen between two irreconcilables? [abstract]. Is the wild animal part of the strangely daemonised [how so?] woman’s dream? Is it perhaps an erotic projection, in which the painter as male lion imagines his beautiful prey? [Freudian]. Or has the spiritualist Rousseau conjured from the depths of sleep the archetypes of the self, unbridled feelings and the black, unknown anima? [Jungian].” She also unconvincingly suggests, without any evidence, that it is “a political allegory—a tribute to national peace and France’s colonial power . . . a deceptive idyll, and conflict between peace and threat of violence.”
The gentle Sleeping Gypsy is very different from Rousseau’s violent Hungry Lion Attacking an Antelope (1905). But Christopher Green (2005) claims (in this peaceful picture) that the “lion inspires fear and awe” and “the sleeping gypsy is in mortal danger”.
Hungry Lion Attacking an Antelope (Le lion ayant faim se jette sur l’antilope) Henri Rousseau in 1905.
A more precise and less speculative analysis is more illuminating. The stationary sleeping figure looks more like a dark African, in the lion’s country, than a wandering European Gypsy. She sleeps comfortably, in the arid landscape, on a sloping sandbank that echoes the soft curves of the tan hills in the background. The flowing lines of her pink head-cloth, square cushion, and rainbow-striped green, orange and yellow African robe run parallel to the flow of the river and the strings of the oval red-mouthed lute. Her bent right arm, like the bent arm of the lute, clutches a long smooth wooden walking staff.
The lion’s virile bushy-ended tail is erect; his wheat-coloured mane is blown forward by the wind from the left; his footprints, teeth, claws and sexual organs are not shown; and his tame head, sniffing and nuzzling the Gypsy’s shoulder, looks more like a goat than a lion. The lion’s eye is open and alert, the Gypsy’s eyes are closed. The pink toes on her spread feet face in the opposite direction of the lion’s rear paws. The greenish river, seen through the lion’s legs and body, flows quietly from the left and funnels into a narrow channel. Like the brown hills, and the sandbank in the foreground, the river extends to the edge of the picture.
The bright and benign full moon, with a lightly sketched human face, shines directly above the Gypsy’s head. The moon is reflected in the lion’s watchful eye, the Gypsy’s teeth and dainty white collar, and the lute’s ten white pegs. The lute’s six strings match the sky’s six tiny white stars. The lute and rust-colored water jug in the shadows both have the same wide-hipped, narrow-necked human shape.
Rousseau insisted that he was a traditional artist. The Sleeping Gypsy follows the path of the great artists from van der Weyden, through Leonardo and Dürer, to Rubens, who all painted Saint Jerome and his lion. In these works Jerome extracts a thorn from the lion’s paw and establishes their saintly comradeship, first in his study and later in the wilderness. The Golden Legend (c.1265) explains how Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, tamed his pet lion: “One day toward evening, when he was seated with the brethren to hear the sacred lessons read, a lion suddenly limped into the monastery. The other monks fled at the sight of the beast, but Jerome greeted him as a guest. The lion showed him his wounded foot, and Jerome called the brothers and ordered them to wash the animal’s feet and to dress the wound carefully. When they set about doing this, they found that the paw had been scratched and torn by thorns. They did what was necessary, and the lion recovered, lost all his wildness, and lived among the monks like a house pet.” Jerome immediately saw an affinity with the lion, washed his feet and tended his wounds as the disciples did for Christ, and exorcised his savage nature.
Like Saint Jerome, Rousseau’s sleeping Gypsy has created a mystical union with her lion. The lion lies at the saint’s feet, the sleeping Gypsy lies at the lion’s feet. The Gypsy’s desert is like the saint’s wilderness, her dream of the lion who protects her in the desert is like the saint’s prayer. She’s tamed the savage beast with her lute music, just as Jerome had tamed the lion with his thorn surgery. She does not feel “fear and awe,” but is on intimate and companionable terms with her gentle lion. The Gypsy is not oblivious to the mortal danger but, alone in the empty wasteland, feels secure beneath her male protector. Once the connection is made between the lion of Jerome and the lion of the Gypsy, Cocteau’s mystery stands “naked and revealed”. The powerful silent bond between the Gypsy and the lion explains the beast’s humane behavior.
Jeffrey Meyers has published five books on art: Painting and the Novel, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, Impressionist Quartet, Modigliani: A Life and Alex Colville: The Mystery of the Real.
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