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Your galleryArab Horseman Attacked by a Lion
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Find the horse’s pale body within the tangle, then follow the rider’s red cloth upward and the lion’s body downward.
Delacroix painted this imagined attack on paperboard, binding rider, horse, and lion into a compact struggle. It is not a documentary image of Arab life. Such violent scenes belonged to European fantasies that could support colonial stereotypes, even as their dramatic color and movement attracted viewers.
Oil on paperboard · 46 × 38 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Romanticism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Arab Horseman Attacked by a Lion
- Artist
- Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
- Date
- 1849–50
- Medium
- Oil on paperboard
- Dimensions
- 46 × 38 cm (18 1/8 × 15 in.); Framed: 64 × 55 × 8.5 cm (25 1/4 × 21 11/16 × 3 3/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Potter Palmer Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.