Eugène Delacroix

Estate of the artist (sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente Delacroix, 22nd-27th February 1864)
Private Collection, Great Britain
Sale: Christie's, London, 18th November 1994, lot 193
Purchased at the above sale by the late owner

Berne, Kunstmuseum; Hamburg, Kunsthalle: Zeichnen ist Sehen, Meisterwerke von Ingres bis Cézanne aus dem Museum der Bildenden Künste Budapest und aus Schweizer Sammlungen, 1996, no. 19, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz,  Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no. 80, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection, 1999, no. 98, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no. 109, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Vienna, Albertina, Goya bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2005, no. 22, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Das Ewige Auge - Von Rembrandt bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2007, no. 91, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Executed on wove paper. The sheet has been laid down onto Japan paper, and the edges of the sheet are uneven with sections of the extreme edge missing near the right of the upper edge, opposite on the lower edge, and below the centre of the right edge (not visible in the catalogue illustration). There are some scattered small spots of foxing (visible primarily towards the lower edge), a small area in the horse's hind legs and around the horse's rump where fine strands of cotton have attached to the surface, and a tiny pinhead spot of paint flaking below the tiger's tail. There is a small repair in the lower right corner. Presented in a simple gilt frame, the edges of the sheet visible and not covered by the mat, under glass.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Delacroix was fascinated with animals locked in combat with each other, inspired in large part by his trip to London in 1825 where he had seen the work of British painters George Stubbs and James Ward who were already established masters in the genre. In Paris in the company of his contemporary the animalier Antoine-Louis Barye he visited various zoos and menageries in the late 1820s, to draw and sketch, particularly at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

In the present work the force of the encounter between tiger and horse suggests an epic struggle between the tamed and the wild, the known and the unknown, the life and death fight between the two animals a metaphor for the great struggles of civilization, which play such a central role in Delacroix's œuvre.

Whether depicting battles between Turks and Greeks, the powers of Heaven and Hell, Christian and Muslim, the heroes of literature and classical antiquity, or the chance encounter real or not, between two beasts, Delacroix's paintings are typically unforgiving in their brutality. They reveal an obsession with power, colour and movement, and a gladiatorial perspective that dictates only one victor.

Professor Lee Johnson noted that a very similar watercolour to the present work, formerly in the Isaac de Camondo collection, is in the collection of the Musée du Louvre (Cf. Inventaire Général des Dessins de l'Ecole Française, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, Dessins d'Eugène Delacroix, Paris, 1984, no. 1128).