The Toll House 1890

Henri Rousseau made "The Toll House" with oil on canvas, though we do not know the exact date it was made. The painting depicts an anonymous border or edge space, complete with uniformed figures, a gate, and distant smokestacks. Here, Rousseau captures something of the changing face of late 19th-century France, poised between tradition and modernity. Look at how the architecture of the toll house and the dress of its attendants suggest a world of officialdom and bureaucracy, yet the smokestacks in the background hint at a burgeoning industrial landscape. Rousseau was self-taught, and he worked as a toll collector himself for many years, so perhaps this scene is also a reflection on the artist's own social position, suspended between the structures of power and the forces of change. We might think of this painting as a record of a specific time and place, calling on archival research in understanding the painting.