THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The lion, being hungry, hurls itself on the antelope [and] devours it; the panther anxiously awaits the moment when she too will have her turn.  Carnivorous birds have each torn off a piece of flesh from the underside of the poor animal as it lets fall a tear! Sunset.

Henri Rousseau in Searle/Guardian

Rousseau, who put about the story that he had seen the jungle first-hand while in the army in Mexico, in fact never left France, and only joined the army after cheating his employer, a solicitor, out of a trifling sum of money and some stamps, for which he spent a month in jail in 1864. His knowledge of jungles and animals was entirely derived from the zoo and from the taxidermic museum that opened in Paris in 1889.

Searle/Guardian