A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother

Two enormous tigers sprawl among rocks under a cloudy sky, the cub pressing playfully against its mother. Delacroix, who loved painting wild beasts, may have learned their grace from his own cat.

The story behind the painting

Eugene Delacroix painted this canvas in 1830 to 1831, early in his career, when animal subjects strongly attracted him. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1831. Lee Johnson noted that it was Delacroix's largest animal painting to date, shown at an exhibition in the Palais du Luxembourg for the benefit of citizens wounded in the July Revolution. Wikidata gives 1830 as the date. The canvas is large, 130.5 by 195 cm. In French it is called Jeune tigre jouant avec sa mere.

What to look for

The young tiger leans gently into its mother, who lies in the foreground, both stretched out against rocks beneath a cloudy sky. The word playing is apt: this is not a hunt but a moment of tenderness between two powerful bodies. Notice how the great cats are fierce yet serene at once. Some authors say Delacroix used his pet cat as a model for his animals, and though he may have been inspired by visits to the tigers at the Jardin des Plantes with his friend the animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, he was always happiest observing his own cat.

Meaning and intent

The picture owes something to Rubens and contrasts sharply with Delacroix's violent Tiger Hunt. Together they show the ferocity and tenderness these animals are capable of, a duality of behaviour. His great cats can be read as human passions given animal form: in his Journal he wrote that men are tigers and wolves driven to destroy one another. Theophile Gautier even saw the painter himself as feline, with tawny eyes and a firm jaw giving him an untamed, strange, almost alarming beauty. The tigers embody the delight in wildness that fascinated Romantic artists.

Legacy

Tigers and other big cats became a recurring motif across Delacroix's work, and his interest in the wild reached its peak with Ovid among the Scythians in 1859. A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother remains a significant piece in his catalogue. It once belonged to Maurice Cottier and is now on display in Room 77 of the Louvre in Paris, where visitors can still catch the moment of calm between two creatures known for their violence.