1850
oil
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Arab Horseman Attacked by a Lion is a 1850 oil by Eugène Delacroix, a French Romanticism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
A man on a rearing horse fights off a lion with a spear. The animals’ muscles twist together in a knot of fur and sweat. Delacroix painted this scene after visiting North Africa, but it’s not a real moment. French artists often showed Arab men battling wild beasts to make colonial violence feel heroic. The brushstrokes are quick and thick, like the action is happening right now. To see how light and dark shape the drama, look up chiaroscuro.
Man and beast intertwine to form a single writhing body in this emotionally charged depiction of a lion attacking a horse and its rider. Through short, energetic brushstrokes and carefully manipulated contrasts of light and shadow, Eugène Delacroix imbued this imagined scene with action and drama. While many artists of the period explored the theme of man versus nature, depictions of Arab men entangled with wild animals served a specific propagandistic function, justifying the brutality of French colonial rule by depicting its subjects as violent and inhuman.
Baron Michel de Trétaigne, by 1864 [lent by him to Paris 1864]; his sale Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 19, 1872, lot 19 as Cavalier arabe attaqué par un lion for 17,000 francs [price according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. Febvre [according to Moreau 1873, Febvre purchased the painting from the Trétaigne sale]. Boucheron, by 1885 [lent to Paris 1885]. R. Austin Robertson (New York?), by 1892; his estate sale American Art Association, New York, April 8, 1892, lot 127 as Arab cavalier attacked by a Lion for $6,350…
Paris, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Œuvres d’Eugène Delacroix, 1864, cat. 93. Paris, École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Eugène Delacroix, March 6–April 15, 1885, cat. 20. Art Institute of Chicago, Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Prints by Eugène Delacroix 1798–1863, March 20–April 20, 1930, cat. 30. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1933, cat. 243. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1934, cat. 186. Cambridge,…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( DEL-ə-krwah, -KRWAH; French: ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.
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