Lion Devouring a Horse

Prints and Drawings

1844

Eugène Delacroix
French, 1798-1863

Eugène Delacroix’s black-and-white lithographs are almost coloristic in their dramatic explosions of painterly tone. The artist, violently opposed to the careful linear styles espoused by the Royal Academy (as represented by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres and Jacques-Louis David), not only drew his animal prints directly onto the lithographic stone, but also clawed and scraped into them to create further highlights. This Orientalizing print was made twelve years after a seven-month journey through Spain, Morocco, and Algeria and was likely inspired by a combination of memory, imagination, and examination of the Barbary lions at the zoo in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Eugène Delacroix
Title: Lion Devouring a Horse
Place: France (Artist's nationality)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1844
Medium: Lithograph in black on ivory China paper laid down on white wove paper
Dimensions: Image: 17 × 23.5 cm (6 3/4 × 9 5/16 in.); Sheet: 30.5 × 45 cm (12 1/16 × 17 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of the Print and Drawing Club
Reference Number: 1965.165
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Delteil 126 II/V

Moreau 56

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