# Reclining Lion

- By: Edwin Henry Landseer (English, 1802-1873)
- Date: 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
- Credit line: The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/114711)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/bf51427936bd6daf24ad0e20da53cb4d.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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