The Sleeping Gypsy

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier, a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

The Sleeping Gypsy is an 1897 oil on canvas painting by the French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910). It is a fantastical depiction of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, to which it was donated by Olga Guggenheim in 1939. In the museum, the painting is housed next to Vincent van Gogh's famous 1889 painting The Starry Night.