Surprised!

1891

Oil on canvas, 129.8 × 161.9 cm. National Gallery, London

Lightning splits a stormy sky while a tiger crouches low in bending grass. His jungle pictures, some twenty in all, start here; none of his work is better loved.

Every leaf gets its own sharp edge, painted by a man with no formal training. Some critics mocked him, but Picasso and other avant-garde artists admired him.
Its debut was the Salon des Indépendants, a Paris exhibition with no jury.
Look at the tiger: it is unclear whether it is startled or stalking.
A copying device, the pantograph, transferred his outlines; the museum suggests this gives the tiger its weightless look.
The National Gallery bought it in 1972 with help from Walter H. Annenberg.

Years spent as a clerk in the Paris customs office earned him the nickname le Douanier. He also told of soldiering in Mexico, a tale with no basis in fact.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art