2010 marks the arrival of the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac, with those born under this sign likely to be as brave, loyal and fiery as their animal counterparts. While the lion may be king of the Western jungle, Eastern tradition has the tiger ruling its beasts. The tiger’s noble power and splendid striped coat have made it one of the most impressively imposing of felines, long ago inspiring poet William Blake to pen his famed ode to that mysterious tiger burning bright in the forest of the night.
Delacroix’s Tigers
Tigers have prowled onto many an artist’s canvas as well. The Orientalists in particular created various vivid 19th century portraits of the exotic cats in repose, hunting or being hunted, or even as pets of a pasha.
French Orientalist and Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) was intrigued by tigers, but he reportedly never saw any live ones during his travels and had to settle for observing tigers in the Paris Zoo to make his initial studies instead. Delacroix’s Royal Tiger and A Young Tiger Playing with Its Mother capture the curious combination of ferocity and tenderness that these animals are capable of, along with Delacroix’s wonderful detail to the tigers’ expressions and complex fur markings.
Gérôme’s Tiger on the Watch
French Academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) was another Orientalist who seemingly admired the glory of tigers and included them in several works. Gérôme’s Tiger on the Watch offers the paradox of a magnificent tiger on alert not because of another animal, but instead warily observing the arrival of some sort of menacing army making its way through the desert. Conversely, Gérôme’s 1885 The Pasha’s Sorrow shows a man of power utterly depressed over the loss of his beloved tiger, now lying dead upon the floor amid a memorial bed of flowers.
The Tiger Hunt and Surprised! by Henri Rousseau
Though tigers are intrepid and fierce, through the years man and his guns, spears and snares have unfortunately made this species an endangered one. Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) painted various views of the tiger, including the big cat as prey in the 1895-96 The Tiger Hunt and predator in the 1891 Surprised! Interestingly, Rousseau may have used Delacroix’s tiger studies as the model for his own distinctly lush and dream-like works.
In The Tiger Hunt, the animal is unhappily captive and surrounded by desert men and their weapons. In Surprised!, Rousseau’s free-roaming tiger is caught in a storm with flickers of lightning in the sky beyond, yet he seems unfazed by the weather and still focused on making his kill.
The Tigers of Franz Marc and Utagawa Kuniyoshi
German Expressionist and Der Blaue Reiter artist Franz Marc (1880-1916) often featured animals in his works, during a career cut lamentably short by Marc’s being a battle casualty of World War I. Marc’s 1912 Der Tiger is a fine example of his prismatic style, with an interconnected sense of tension between muscles, stripes, gem-like eyes and a multi-colored jungle background.
Japanese Ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s (1797-1861) tiger also moves with a sense of tension and stealthy downward grace. Cat-lover Kuniyoshi used thicker patterns of black stripes deepened by subtle fur-like strokes that again bring to mind the "fearful symmetry" of Blake’s tiger — and its formidable beauty.
Sources
- Royal Tiger: Eugene Delacroix -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Henri Rousseau’s Surprised! -- The National Gallery, London
