A Carnival Evening was a breakthrough piece for French Post-Impressionist, Henri Rousseau, a self-taught artist, a former tax collector. Rousseau’s work is quite literal and this piece in particular is quite mysterious. It is straight forward in execution and speculative in interpretation. 

Rousseau’s style is termed Primitivism or Naïve Art and his works are a second career triumph embraced by the avant-garde of his time and ours. This work is currently in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

So you may be asking where is the carnival? Is this small couple going or returning? How did these perfectly costumed people end up in the dark, foreboding forest under a beautiful sky? They seem to have stopped as they hold each other. Why? Is that a face watching under the black structure’s roof? This painting reads like a fairy tale at an “into the woods” moment.  We may have felt the tension painted here in more than a few moments of the past year.

Maybe what we see in this painting is broad uncertainty in small brushstrokes. This mysterious, captivating work could be a valley of the shadow experience on the lived way to the next eventual carnival of assurance, love and joy. The Lord is our shepherd on this way. We shall not want. Thanks be to God.

In faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church