Lioness and Cubs (c. 1832): Artwork and History

Lioness and Cubs (c. 1832) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Antoine Louis Barye French, 1795-1875.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Barye strove for anatomical accuracy in his sculptures, and his watercolors show his interest, shared with Delacroix, in the physiological similarities between humans and wild cats. A painting and print by Delacroix, from 1830 and 1831, respectively, may have inspired the feline family grouping seen here. Barye and Delacroix also spent time drawing animals from life at the Jardin des Plantes. Access to sketch the zoo animals was not guaranteed unless, like Barye and Delacroix, one knew the director; the fascinated public applied in droves for tickets when a giraffe entered the menagerie in 1827.

Object facts

• Title: Lioness and Cubs
• Date: c. 1832
• Artist attribution: Antoine Louis Barye French, 1795-1875
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Watercolor, with graphite, on ivory wove paper, laid down on Japanese paper
• Dimensions: 13.8 × 23.5 cm (5 7/16 × 9 5/16 in.)
• Type: Drawing and Watercolor
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1930.819

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer II Collection

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.