Tiger Ready to Spring
Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)
n.d.
- Medium
- Cliché verre on cream wove paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 15.8 × 19.1 cm (6 1/4 × 7 9/16 in.); Plate: 16.7 × 20.1 cm (6 5/8 × 7 15/16 in.); Sheet: 17 × 20.5 cm (6 3/4 × 8 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of the Print and Drawing Club
- 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
In contrast to the many resting tigers depicted by Delacroix in paintings, lithographs, and etchings, this one stands upright on its feet, tense and snarling at a challenger to the left. This is a rare instance of the artist’s use of the cliché verre technique, in which lines were etched or drawn on a glass plate to make a photographically produced image. Here the sparely delineated strokes imbue the wiry cat with an almost electric sense of anticipation and compact power.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
