A Young Tiger Playing with Its Mother
| A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother | |
|---|---|
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother is an 1830–1831 painting by French artist
Influence and analysis
Sweetly, the young background tiger slopes in his mother in the foreground, both running into rocks and under a cloudy sky. Some authors have written that Delacroix's animal paintings were made using his pet cat as a model.
The piece was in some way influenced by
These paintings, along with A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, can be interpreted as a form of the artist displaying human emotions and passions personified as tame and fierce animals. For example, Delacroix wrote in his Journal of the time: "Men are tigers and wolves driven to destroy one another".[5] His friend Théophile Gautier saw a resemblance between his manner and those of these great cats that he painted, writing: "His tawny eyes, with their feline expression, his slender lips stretched tight over magnificent teeth, his firm jaw line emphasised by strong cheekbones... gave his features an untamed, a strange, exotic, almost alarming beauty."[4]
In French, the picture is called Jeune tigre jouant avec sa mère. Its fierce but also divinely serene animals represent the "delight in
"A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, Delacroix's largest
Palais du Luxembourg for the benefit of citizens wounded in the July Revolution."[7]
Other paintings with similar themes
-
Tiger, 36 × 53 cm -
Tiger and Snake. Oil on canvas, 13 × 161⁄4 in, 1862 -
Sketch for a lion hunt, 1854
References
- ^ Rhoda Eitel (Pierpont Morgan Library), From Leonardo to Pollock: master drawings from the Morgan Library, Pierpont Morgan Library, 2006.
- ISBN 2-08-012578-8.
- ISBN 0-516-22576-6
- ^ ISBN 3-8228-5988-5
- ^ Néret, 2000, p.64. Les hommes sont des tigres et des loups animés les uns contre les autres pour s'entre-détruire.
- ISBN 0-674-93736-8
- ISBN 0-19-817314-8
External links
- A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother – Olga's Gallery
