Although he set his sights on becoming a famous academic painter, ironically, Rousseau instead became the complete opposite: a quintessential naïve artist. Largely self-taught, Rousseau developed a style that laid bare his lack of academic training. One-point perspective, the absence of correct proportions and the use of piercing, often unnatural colours resulted in a body of work imbued with mystery and unconventionality. In one of his paintings the bananas are shown growing upside-down and in other paintings he grouped together animals from different continents that would never live side by side in the wild.