Eve and the Serpent

Eve and the Serpent from around 1900 brings Rousseau to biblical narrative in characteristic terms — the primal garden of Eden depicted with the same earnest, literal attention he gave to contemporary Paris suburbs. Eve, the serpent, and the surrounding vegetation all receive equal descriptive care, producing an image simultaneously solemn and naïve. The Hamburger Kunsthalle holds this work, which entered German collections through the market for French avant-garde painting that developed in the early twentieth century. The Surrealists found in this image a confirmation of Rousseau's access to unconscious imagery.

The garden's foliage is rendered with Rousseau's characteristic leaf-by-leaf precision, each plant form described individually in clear outline and local color. Eve's figure is pale and sculptural against the dense green, simplified without distortion, possessing a strange dignity appropriate to a primal origin scene.