Gérôme, Jean-Léon (1824-1904)
Tigresse et ses petits (Tiger and Cubs)
c.1884
Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 91.4 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Gérôme attributed the success of his animal paintings to his early studies at the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The soft handling and the unemphatic drawing in this painting are characteristic of Gérôme’s work from the 1880s. It was probably painted about 1884, when the artist exhibited another nocturnal scene featuring tigers, Night in the Desert, at the Paris Salon (now Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh). (MET)