The Football Players

Four or five players in striped outfits leap and lunge among trees lining a park avenue, their bodies caught mid-motion against a sky filled with soft white clouds. The trees form a gold-toned corridor, their leaves rendered in warm autumn hues that frame the match below. This oil painting was completed in 1908 and is held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Henri Rousseau, who lived from 1844 to 1910 and worked in France, painted in a naïve art style that gave his scenes a simplified, dreamlike character; he is also known for his notable work The Dream. One detail worth noticing is how the stripes on the players' clothing echo the vertical rhythm of the tree trunks, tying the figures visually to their golden surroundings.