Lion of the Atlas Mountains

Eugène Delacroix

1829–30 · Lithograph; third state of four · Drawings and Prints

In 1829, Delacroix and his friend the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye had the opportunity to closely observe the dissection of a lion in Frédéric Cuvier’s laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes. According to the critic Hippolyte Taine, Delacroix later recollected his observation that the "lion’s front leg was the huge arm of a man, but twisted and turned backward." Significantly, Delacroix noted the lion’s place of origin, the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, when he titled this ambitious lithograph, published in 1830. That same year, fourteen lions arrived in the capital following France’s colonial invasion of Algeria. Big-game hunting rendered the species extinct by the early twentieth century.

Artist

Eugène Delacroix

Date

1829–30

Medium

Lithograph; third state of four

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929