Eugène Delacroix was one of France’s greatest 19th-century artists, a leader of the country’s Romantic movement and a virtuosic colorist.Renowned for monumental canvases such as “Liberty Leading the People,” he is considered the last great history painter. His genius extended to creating mural decorations for government buildings, portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings.
Delacroix was drawn to depicting exotic locales and scenes of intense emotion and physicality that highlighted tensions between civilization and savagery. These elements came to fruition in his portrayals of big cats—specifically lions and tigers. He identified with these felines, carefully observing them and capturing their magnificence in a range of mediums throughout his career. The resultant celebrated artworks are among his masterpieces.
Exotic Prowess
A self-portrait with Green Vest, circa 1837, by Eugène Delacroix. Oil on canvas; 25 1/2 inches by 21 2/5 inches. Louvre Museum, Paris. (Public Domain)
Delacroix (1798–1863) was born into a prominent French family. His father was a statesman and his mother came from a lineage of artisans. While he studied under a professional artist and attended the École des Beaux-Arts for a time, he was essentially self-taught. His greatest training came from visiting the Louvre and copying the old masters, especially Peter Paul Rubens and Venetian Renaissance artists. His early work was marked by extravagant, expressive use of color and narratives from literature’s greats such as Dante, Shakespeare, and Byron.
Delacroix used wild animals as subjects to express his interest in depicting anatomy, vitality, and distant lands. He rarely traveled outside France, so his opportunities to sketch life studies came from numerous visits to zoo animals at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. His study of felines began around the late 1820s. Delacroix found excursions to the menagerie invigorating and helpful in that they sharpened his observations of nature. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a delightful sketch called “A Lion, Full Face, August 30, 1841” from such an outing. The graphite work on paper includes color notations in reference to the mane and nose.
"A Lion, Full Face, August 30, 1841" by Eugène Delacroix. Graphite; 4 5/8 inches by 7 3/16 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Public Domain)
An important early feline work by Delacroix is a lithographic series from 1829 called “Royal Tiger,” considered one of the finest 19th-century works in the medium. Situated on a bluff with a view over a plain, the quiet tiger is clearly on the hunt for prey; his curled body seems ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Delacroix achieves a naturalistic image of the tiger and manipulates the medium to give the work a painterly quality.
"Royal Tiger," 1829, by Eugène Delacroix. Lithograph; 12 13/16 inches by 18 5/16 inches. The Cleveland Museum of Art. (Public Domain)
Lithographic printing had been invented only 33 years earlier. The process entails drawing with a greasy crayon on a flat stone surface. After treatment with gum arabic and an acid, the grease attracted ink. Printers laid paper against the ink and produced a picture. In these prints, a watchful tiger is lying down on the ground.
“Young Tiger Playing With Its Mother,” 1830, by Eugène Delacroix. Oil on canvas; 51 inches by 77 inches. Louvre Museum, Paris. (Public Domain)
In 1832, Delacroix took a life-changing trip to Morocco, Spain, and Algeria. Although scholars don’t believe he saw felines in the wild there, the trip further fueled his interest in Orientalist subjects. The 19th-century art movement Orientalism refers to depictions by Western artists of life, albeit a mixture of reality and imagination, in the Eastern regions of Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa. In Delacroix’s oeuvre, the most famous painting in this style is “Women of Algiers in their Apartment.” These travels also featured in later feline works.
In 1830, Delacroix painted one of his most beloved works in the big cat genre, “Young Tiger Playing with its Mother (Study of Two Tigers),” which is part of the Louvre’s collection. When the painting was first exhibited, a critic wrote, “This singular artist has never painted a man who resembled a man as closely as his tiger resembles a tiger. … It is astonishing to see animals painted with greater force, exactness and resemblance than men.” This charming scene, rendered with rich colors and textures, displays noble tigers that radiate personality, poise, and playfulness.
"Lying Lion in a landscape," 19th century, by Eugène Delacroix. Watercolor on paper; 7 5/8 inches by 10 5/8 inches. Private collection. (Public Domain)
In subsequent decades, Delacroix explored lions and tigers on canvas and on paper. The exquisite watercolor “Lying lion in a landscape” shows a confident and fierce tawny lion depicted in a bright palette in front of a darkened cave.
“Tiger Stopped,” 1854, by Eugène Delacroix. Cliché-verre on wove paper; 6 9/16 inches by 7 13/16 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Public Domain)
Delacroix also experimented with new art technologies. The 1854 “Tiger Stopped,” part of the National Gallery of Art’s collection, is a cliché-verre on wove paper. The practice of cliché-verre had just been developed. It combined the media of drawing and printmaking with photography. An artist incised a drawing or painted an image on a transparent glass plate, which was then affixed to light-sensitive paper and exposed to sunlight. The always innovative and imaginative Delacroix brought his characteristic vibrant mark-making to this depiction of a ferocious tiger.
Lion Hunt
"Lion Hunt," 1860/61, by Eugène Delacroix. Oil on canvas' 30 inches by 38 1/2 inches. Art Institute of Chicago. (Public Domain)
Delacroix painted a series of powerful canvases featuring lion hunts. While he never witnessed one in person, he drew on his studies of North Africa, zoo animals, and art history to create these theatrical works. Leonardo da Vinci’s preparatory drawings for his legendary, unexecuted painting of “The Battle of Anghiari”—later copied by Rubens—and Rubens’ own series of hunting pictures inspired Delacroix’s painting cycle.
The first canvas was monumental. Upon seeing it, poet Charles Baudelaire wrote, “Never have more beautiful, more intense colours been channelled through the eyes to the soul.” Sadly, it was partially destroyed by a fire in 1870, and it survives today as a fragment.
The artist painted additional versions of the theme in the 1850s and early 1860s. One of the most admired examples is the 1860–61 “Lion Hunt” at the Art Institute of Chicago. This work was completed only two years before Delacroix’s death and was the culmination of his ongoing explorations of the complex relationship between man, beast, and nature.
In the composition, men dressed in North African clothes are locked in a frenzied, violent whorl of motion with two lions. The two species exhibit similarities and parallels. In the foreground, the hand of the man that grabs the lion’s mane resembles the feline’s own paw. Their knees correspond, too, while the lion’s bent right wrist has a human quality.Delacroix’s concise, rapid brushstrokes enhance the scene’s sensationalism.
The violence of the “Lion Hunt” and its sister pictures is countered by a reflective and restrained yet powerful painting dating to 1862. “Tiger Playing With a Tortoise” is privately owned after selling at Christie’s for $9.87 million in the 2018 “The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller” sale. The auction catalogue explains that the work shows “a surprising meeting between a dominant, powerful predator and a much smaller and weaker species. Having trapped the tortoise beneath his paw, the tiger’s killer instinct gives way to confusion and curiosity.”
“Tiger Playing With a Tortoise,” 1862, by Eugène Delacroix. Oil on canvas; 17 3/4 inches by 24 1/2 inches. Private collection. (Public Domain)
Delacroix did a series of paintings in the final decade of his life that paired unequal adversaries in intriguing ways, another means of symbolizing man’s complex relationship with the forces of nature. Delving into the various emotional and physical states of tigers and lions became, to quote a contemporary, a “true obsession.” This versatile painter created depth and variety with the same subjects through expression, movement, and color.
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Michelle Plastrik is an art adviser living in New York City. She writes on a range of topics, including art history, the art market, museums, art fairs, and special exhibitions.
