Which French artist painted "Tiger in a Tropical Storm"?

"Tiger in a Tropical Storm or Surprised!" is an 1891 oil-on-canvas painting by Henri Rousseau. It was the first of the jungle paintings for which the artist is chiefly known. It shows a tiger, illuminated by a flash of lightning, preparing to pounce on its prey in the midst of a raging gale.

Unable to have a painting accepted by the jury of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, Rousseau exhibited "Tiger in a Tropical Storm" in 1891 under the title "Surpris!", at the Salon des Indépendants, which was unjuried and open to all artists. The painting received mixed reviews. Rousseau had been a late developer: his first known work, "Landscape with a Windmill", was not produced until he was 35, and his work is marked by a naïveté of composition that belies its technical complexity. Most critics mocked Rousseau's work as childish, but Félix Vallotton, a young Swiss painter who was later to be an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut, said of it:

"His tiger surprising its prey is a 'must-see'; it's the alpha and omega of painting and so disconcerting that, before so much competency and childish naïveté, the most deeply rooted convictions are held up and questioned."

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.