MURA · THE COLLECTION · HENRI ROUSSEAU

Sawmill, Outskirts of Paris

Sawmill, Outskirts of Paris is a small oil painting by Henri Rousseau, dated by the Art Institute of Chicago to about 1893–95. It shows a path, hedges and stacked timber at a sawmill on the edge of the city, and measures 25.5 by 45.5 cm. It came to the museum in 1950 as the bequest of Kate L. Brewster.

Henri Rousseau · c. 1893/95 · Oil on canvas · Post-Impressionism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The catalogue entry describes a winding path, dark hedges and pale timber arranged into a quietly ordered world. The picture has carried several names: Adolphe Basler published it in 1927 as Scierie de Clamart, the sawmill at Clamart; Christian Zervos the same year as Environs de Paris; André Salmon simply as Paysage. In 2026 the Musée de l'Orangerie showed it as Scierie, environs de Paris.

How it was painted

Rousseau was born in Laval in 1844, the son of a tinsmith. He served four years in the army, moved to Paris in 1868 and in 1871 was appointed a collector of the octroi, the tax on goods entering the city, which earned him the nickname Le Douanier, the customs officer. He was self-taught, started painting seriously in his early forties and retired at 49 to work full time. From 1886 he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, and in 1893, around the time of this canvas, he moved to a studio in Montparnasse where he lived until his death in 1910. Ridiculed by critics in his lifetime, he was later recognised for the quality of his work and its influence on the avant-garde; his paintings were shown at the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter in Munich in 1911.

Where it went

The painting belonged to the Paris dealer Paul Guillaume by 1927 and to Valentine Dudensing in New York in 1929. Walter S. and Kate Brewster of Chicago owned it by 1933, when it was shown in their home, and Kate Brewster bequeathed it to the Art Institute in 1950. It was included in the museum's Rousseau exhibition of 1942, which travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, and has since been lent to Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris at Tate Modern, the Grand Palais and the National Gallery of Art in 2005–06, and to Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets at the Barnes Foundation and the Orangerie in 2025–26. The museum lists no current gallery for it.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to Mura's Modern Colour collection with a pastoral mood: hedges, timber and a winding path in quiet order.