Jean-Léon Gérôme

French, 1824-1904

Lion in the Desert

Public Domain

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Public Domain

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

Public Domain

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

Public Domain

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

Lion in the Desert, ca. 1885

Artwork Details

Materials

oil on canvas

Measurements

support: 27 x 36 3/8 inches (68.58 x 92.3925 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Credit

Gift of Patricia Parkinson Neff and Grace de Cernea Reiniger in memory of their mother Lucia Depew Hurd, 1972

Accession ID

1972:13

Lions take center stage in a number of compositions Jean-Léon Gérôme painted throughout the 1880s. At the time, paintings and sculptures by French animalier artists were increasing in popularity among the general public. However, Gérôme’s interest in the subject dated to his student years, when he regularly went to the zoo in Paris to sketch lions. A safari in North Africa in 1885 further fueled his fascination with the animal. It was there that his zeal for exotic subjects and the desert terrain took root. This sketchy and sun-filled landscape of a drinking lion is actually an unfinished composition—the artist’s underdrawing in black ink is still visible.

Label from Menagerie: Animals on View, March 11–June 4, 2017