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Reclining Lion
Edwin Henry Landseer (English, 1802-1873)
1816
- Medium
- Graphite with touches of white chalk, on cream wove paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 11.5 × 18.1 cm (4 9/16 × 7 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Landseer was an artistic prodigy, drawing animals with great realism by age nine. These included a lion displayed at the London Exeter Exchange menagerie, whose dissected body he may later have viewed in 1820. These sketches (1993.248.1619 and 1993.248.1617) suggest not only the artist’s keen powers of observation, but also provide a contrast to the romanticized works by Delacroix through the depiction of the animal’s sparse, apparently inhumane living quarters. The beloved animal painter of Queen Victoria, Landseer later designed the massive lion sculptures in Trafalgar Square.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
