The Snake Charmer

A dark, silhouetted figure stands playing a flute in a dense moonlit jungle, snakes uncoiling toward the music from the shadowed foliage as a pale bird looks on. Henri Rousseau conjures an Edenic, hypnotic scene of pure mystery, the black figure and silvered leaves lending it a hushed, dreamlike enchantment. Now in the Musee d'Orsay, the Snake Charmer is among the most magical of his imagined jungles - the self-taught painter's vision of a primeval paradise, eerie and serene, the kind of poetic strangeness that drew the admiration of the modern avant-garde.