Lioness and Cubs
Antoine Louis Barye (French, 1795-1875)
c. 1832
- Medium
- Watercolor, with graphite, on ivory wove paper, laid down on Japanese paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 13.8 × 23.5 cm (5 7/16 × 9 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer II 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
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.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
