[..] Rousseau is now best known for his jungle scenes, the first of which is Surprised! (Tropical Storm with a Tiger) (National Gallery, London, 1891) and the last The Dream (MOMA, New York, 1910).[..] http://www.library.vstu.edu.ru/gallery/Rousseau/Rousseau.htm
The first thing I noticed about "Sleeping Gypsy" was that it didn't have quite the feel of a 'signature expression', meaning it has some measure of , what should I call it, jadedness (-"worn out or wearied, as by overwork or overuse".). Then noting that "Surprised!" was the first jungle painting, I was immediately reassured of another of my heuristics; the earliest, initiating, work does have more of the undiluted horoscopic expressionism, and less likely to be the result of some kind of self-imposed censorship.
http://pedantus.free.fr/Rousseau_H_1_01.gif
The closest natal aspect is Mars trine Neptune, and Mars has the most close aspects (orbs of one degree or less):
http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Rousseau,_Henri
Having no idea the exact date of the painting's appearance, I used July 1, 1891 as the approximate date, thus just pointing at the middle of the given year. Here is a natal chart showing the Sun's progressed position:
http://pedantus.free.fr/Rousseau_H_2a.gif
A natal and transit projection shows the prominence of t-Uranus during the year of the the first jungle painting, "Surprised!" :
http://pedantus.free.fr/Rousseau_H_2b.gif
Here then is the layered projection of the combined natal chart and painting:
http://pedantus.free.fr/Rousseau_H_1a.gif
Here I have isolated a portion of his composition (encircled with a white dotted line) to show how Mars trine Neptune presents using a metaphor of active red leaves--a 50/50 blend of the characterists of each planet, at least as I have come to appreciate and or expect their respective appearances in drawings. When the painter is free of the need to project multiple objects of recognition, the planets 'energies' are much less diluted:
http://pedantus.free.fr/Rousseau_H_3a.gif
Note the singular presence of a circular object, the 'eye' of the tiger; it of course even has a dot in it. It is the token of the natal Sun's house position, relative to the area covered by one's visual perception field, or gaze. Because we apparently project our human habit of interpreting spacial relationships like this, as if we were unconsciously guided by the philosophical deconstruction of what we see, the visual positions of house positions is an emergent linguistic phenomenon. If we look at the last formal philosopher's work (/creative self-expression), Hegel's systematic idealism, his dialectical tensions are easily mapped on to the Zodiac which does serves as something of a Rosetta Stone showing an overlap of visual and natural language (I have substituted Authority and Responsibility for his thematic Master and Slave dialectic). This because, this is apparently how we humans think or at least intuit the holistic system of mind/psyche:
http://pedantus.free.fr/HegelsDialectics_01.gif
So, then, the "houses" are in us, so to speak, these generalizing abstracts exist for us to project when we do the intuitive process of perceiving the more image-less relations between idealized concepts--the incomprehensible mind magic of perceptual gestalt, the recognition of wholes as being something other than the mere sum of their parts--parts that we are free to seek out only as a matter of secondary experiences, our habit of post-impression analysis out of pure curiosity I guess.
What I am endeavoring to show here, in general, is that we can observe persons expressing that which astrology calls a natal chart in their own personal innate dialect--the language of the unique self as it exists, immersed as it is, in its specific experiential social/cultural milieu. Rousseau's tiger is pointed, teeth and claws, at the visual equivalent of his natal Mars astrological house position--a graphic version of the Gauquelin "Mars Effect"....the difference being that in graphic arts we do not need a heavy emphasis on the Gauquelin sectors, we can see Mars as projected into any house position as need be to parallel the internal language of the psyche and its ineffable Self 'image'.
Basically, the fluffy translucent looking tops of reeds we see at the left hand side of Rousseau's "Surprised!" --at the visual place of the astrological Ascendant, is "Neptune", (likewise all the leafy flowing material) The tiger's eye is the natal Sun, and the all the movement of the storm's assertive invisible air directs our attention the general location of natal Mars. "Surprise" is then, by comparison to Rousseau's oeuvre, relatively much more the signature expression--an instance of horoscopic expressionism has taken place with enough explicitness that one could closely approximate the painter's specific birth time, if it were not already a given. The trick, now, is to learn how we can recognize a signature expression, so that the objectivity presumed to be totally missing from astrology can be more empirically demonstrated, at least in part, as abstract language and visual metaphors signifying the individual psyche more in a fingerprint manner of demarcation, simply as an expression individuated identity, its relationship to time.
