Young Tiger Playing with Its Mother

Description

A tiger mother reclines at the left while her cub leans across her body from the right in Eugène Delacroix’s dark lithograph. The neighboring forms make play tangible through contact and different bodily positions. Animals often associated with force acquire another character here, allowing a lively relationship between adult and young creature to carry the scene’s immediate interest.

Made in 1831, the work is a lithograph. Delacroix gives the paired subject the intimacy of a print on paper, making the relationship between adult and young animal available to sustained looking. Its appeal lies in the change from violence to play within the same natural world. The work preserves a lively encounter whose energy comes from proximity and response, allowing the two creatures to become engaging through their connection to one another.