Gericault’s lifelong interest in animal themes is best known through his love of horses. He had an intimate knowledge of horses, which he derived not only from drawing and painting them continually but also from developing his skills as an equestrian. Even in an era when horses were commonplace, Gericault’s sense of the equilibrium between horse and human was acute. From time to time, he showed interest in other animals—cattle, dogs, boars, and cats also drew his attention. Like horses, cats hold a special place in his work. Domestic cats, like horses, can have a companionable side. But they also evince indomitability, a quality fully embodied by lions and other felines. In the course of his career, Gericault produced numerous studies of one or more lions, as attested, for example, by a sketchbook datable to about 1812–14, in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. 95.GD.40.1–58). He had a number of opportunities to study live animals. In 1817, Sultan Mulay Suleiman of Morocco sent King Louis XVIII two lions, and it is possible that Gericault was able to sketch them from life in Paris. He unquestionably sketched lions at the London zoo in 1820, during the second exhibition of The Raft of the Medusa (see fig. 8 above). The artist also owed a fundamental debt to the prints of George Stubbs, as well as to the animal subjects of Peter Paul Rubens, which he had copied from paintings on view at the Louvre and from reproductive prints.[1] Lions were a link to the exotic and to the art of the past, but they also exemplified the concept of the Sublime, that is, the human experience of awe or terror before overwhelming natural forces. This was a prominent theme of the Romantic period during which Gericault worked.

The Painting: This vigorously executed painting, which depicts three adult male lions and three lionesses (or one lioness and two juvenile lions) in a mountainous lair, is an extraordinary example of Gericault’s spontaneous handling of paint. Rather than applying finishing touches to make a polished cabinet picture, the artist left the painting in a state known as an esquisse, or sketch, a work prized by fellow artists and, increasingly, collectors, for its strength of directly capturing a subject or effect. The setting for these six lions is a remote plateau, evocative perhaps of the mountains of North Africa. Although it may appear at first that they are situated within a cave, the rock-like shapes behind them are mountains. The spectral red light at the far right may be read as a distant, atmospheric reflection of the setting sun: Gericault often employed this device, as in The Met’s Evening: Landscape (1989.183).

Lions in a Mountainous Landscape is exceptional for a number of reasons, one of which is that the results of its physical examination offer rare insight into Gericault’s creative process (see Technical Notes). Gericault was notorious for campaigns around specific themes that never resulted in definitive compositions. Much of his legacy consists of subjects developed in series of sketches without achieving final form. The grandest of these was The Race of the Riderless Horses in Rome of 1817, although dozens of examples may be cited, from all phases of his brief career. (Among the most advanced studies related to The Race are those in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille; and Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.) In the present case, the artist sought to develop a composition without an obvious source outside his own work or, it seems, preparatory studies. The aesthetic appeal of sketches painted wet-into-wet with a loaded brush, as seen to such great effect here, were profoundly influential on contemporaries who saw them in his studio, making them fundamental touchstones of the emerging Romantic aesthetic.

There are no known directly related preliminary studies for Lions in a Mountainous Landscape, but infrared reflectography (see fig. 1) and X-radiography (fig. 2) have revealed a brilliantly spirited underdrawing and pentimenti that illuminate the artist’s working methods as he developed the composition with unusual efficiency. The wood support provided a durable surface that invited and preserved extensive and vigorous underdrawing. The underdrawing was produced quickly, seemingly all at once. No preparatory studies are known. The paint was applied vigorously, even crudely, as if the artist’s intention was to get it down as part of the same burst of inspiration as the drawing beneath it. But the modification to the background (see Technical Note) indicates the artist’s investment in this work.

Context: At an unknown date, Gericault made a painting after Stubbs’s 1788 engraving A Horse Affrighted at a Lion (The Met 1970.603.1).[2] More relevant to Lions in a Mountainous Landscape, however, owing not only to its subject but its wood support, is Study of Five Lions (fig. 3). At 18 7/8 by 22 13/16 inches (48 x 58 cm), it is essentially the same size as The Met’s picture, which measures 19 x 23 1/2 in. (48.3 x 59.7 cm), though the panel construction differs. Both works appear to be painted directly on the wood panel, likely sized, but without a ground. Four of the five felines in Study of Five Lions derive from Rubens’s painting Daniel in the Lions’ Den of about 1614/16 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Gericault knew Daniel in the Lions’ Den from a print that reproduces it in reverse (fig. 4), which is evident from the direction of the lions both in his painting and in a related drawing (fig. 5). In extrapolating from Rubens, Gericault eliminated the human element entirely, removing any trace of historical narrative to evoke a world accessible only by means of the imagination.

In Lions in a Mountainous Landscape Gericault extended the process of inventing a wild animal subject essayed in Five Lions. In Five Lions, Gericault proceeded in a series of modest steps, by adapting four lions found in Rubens’s composition to a new context and adding the fifth walking lion seen in right profile, possibly his own invention. Lions in a Mountainous Landscape is, on the whole, more ambitious. It therefore seems probable that Five Lions preceded Lions in a Mountainous Landscape. (One element, the bone at the left, is likely a reminiscence of Rubens’s Daniel.) But it is difficult to reliably assign a date to either work, even given similarities in the material and size of their supports. What is known is that Gericault executed a Study of a Leopard-Skin Saddle Blanket (fig. 6) on the other face of the same panel as Five Lions, in preparation for The Charging Chasseur (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 4885), exhibited at the Salon of 1812. At an unknown date, the panel support, with Five Lions on one side and the Leopard-Skin study on the other, was divided, effectively resulting in two one-sided paintings. These panels do not have the characteristics of supports manufactured for artists, and Gericault may have repurposed elements from another source. He used a similarly unconventional support for a painting of 1813/14, known as The Farrier’s Signboard (fig. 7).

Despite its seemingly casual composition, Lions in a Mountainous Landscape is characteristic of Gericault’s use of complex, almost sculpturally modeled figures arranged in a cruciform group, as if on a plinth tilted up slightly at a diagonal, away from the picture plane, the whole dramatically lit from the left, which bears affinities with The Raft of the Medusa (fig. 8). Gericault’s first biographer and cataloguer, Charles Clément (1867 and 1879), dated the present work after the artist’s return to Paris from Italy in fall 1817, and before he began work on The Raft in 1818, though it bears noting that The Raft, completed in 1819 for that year’s Salon, assumed its right-facing composition mid-development.[3]

Legacy: There is a version of Lions in a Mountainous Landscape (fig. 9), which is generally thought to be a copy by another artist. Philippe Grunchec (1978), the first modern scholar to see The Met’s painting, thought it superior to the Louvre’s canvas, currently catalogued as “attributed to Gericault.” The latter version was considered to be autograph when it arrived at the Louvre in 1936, as a gift from a private collector; The Met’s picture was then hidden from view in the Schickler collection. In addition to stylistic evidence, Grunchec cited circumstantial documentary evidence, which suggests that the Louvre canvas is a copy of the present work, possibly made by Gericault’s close friend Pierre-Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy (1789–1874). Another scholar, Germain Bazin (1997), extended Grunchec’s observations by taking into account the material properties of the Louvre painting, concluding that it is not an autograph work by Gericault. Gericault died at thirty-three on January 26, 1824. His studio sale, evidently planned for spring, was not held until November 2–3, 1824. His friends, students, and other artists may have made copies of many of his compositions during the interval, though it is also possible that they did so previously or even after their dispersal. These copies continue to vex Gericault scholars. Bazin only knew a photograph of the present work and therefore was unable to accept or reject it.

The Louvre version reproduces every detail of the Met’s picture, with the exception of the sides, which are slightly cropped. Missing is the vertical black form at the right margin of The Met’s painting. It seems too geometric to be natural but out of place as a man-made object. Its function has not yet been defined.

Beyond copies, works such as Lions in a Mountainous Landscape provide the essential link between Rubens and Stubbs and Gericault’s most notable successors, such as Eugène Delacroix (for example, see The Met 69.165.2 and 67.630.13) and Antoine-Louis Barye (for example, see The Met 10.108.3 and 29.100.585).

Jean-Georges Schickler: Of Swiss origin, the Schickler family were well established as bankers in Paris in the early nineteenth century. They are most often associated with Gericault through the famous première esquisse for The Raft of the Medusa (Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 2229) that Arthur de Schickler (1828–1919) acquired between 1853 and 1867. But, it was his father, Jean-Georges Schickler (1785–1843), who first owned the present work. The posthumous sale organized by his heirs, held at 17, place Vendôme, Paris, on February 10, 12, and 14, 1844, included two paintings and five drawings of horses by Gericault, but the family retained the present oil study. No direct link between Gericault and Schickler has come to light, but the collector seems to have known Gericault’s close friend Horace Vernet by 1820, when Vernet made a lithograph of his race horse, Constance. Evidently, all three men shared a love of animals and animal subjects in art.

Arthur de Schickler also owned the Study of Five Lions, but it is not known whether his father did as well.

Asher Miller 2020

[1] Existing scholarship provides an outline for Gericault’s engagement with leonine subjects. See Lorenz E. A. Eitner, Géricault: His Life and Work (London, 1983), pp. 232–34.
[2] The painting was divided in the nineteenth century; the two extant fragments are today in separate private collections. See Grunchec 1978, p. 117, no. 194a (horse) and 194b (lion). Gericault would continue to explore animal-to-animal violence in other works, for example two lithographs, both in The Met’s collection, Lion Devouring a Horse of 1818 (29.107.127) and A Horse Being Eaten by a Lion of 1823 (50.576.100).
[3] See Lorenz Eitner, “Reversals of Direction in Géricault’s Compositional Projects,” in Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes: Akten des 21. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn 1964 (Berlin, 1967), vol. 3: Theorien und Probleme, pp. 126–33, plates III/20–24.

This is one of a small number of works on panel by the artist. The support is composed of two horizontal boards of conifer wood, butt joined below center. The upper board is thirty-one centimeters wide and the lower board is 19.8 centimeters wide; the panel is eleven millimeters thick. The prominent grain of the panel is evident because there appears to be no ground layer. (The panel seems to have been prepared for painting simply by sizing.)[1] Extensive light scorings in the soft wood surface prior to painting also contribute to the rugged overall texture. The unconventional character of the panel suggests that it may have been repurposed. The warm, mid-toned wood is visible through the more cursorily painted passages of the composition. The panel was cradled in a past treatment.

Extensive graphite underdrawing can be glimpsed from the surface through open passages in the painting, and more fully imaged using infrared reflectography.[2] The infrared reflectogram (see fig. 1 above), which viewers are encouraged to zoom into and explore, shows extremely bold, free drawing, featuring calligraphic lines and dense hatching, applied with such force that some of the marks indented the surface of the panel. The drawing of the shadowed lion in the front is particularly rich and varied: from the very fine hatching in the head and detailed description of the fur of the mane, through broader hatching in the dark body, to increasingly abbreviated and energetic zigzags in the rump and open looping lines for the tail. The head of the reclining lioness is rendered with great care and sensitivity, while the loose and energetic drawing of the fighting lionesses (or juvenile lions) describes musculature and furious movement. The cacophony of lines in and around this complex grouping may also include an earlier position for one of the animals. Likewise, we see the artist searching for lines in the bone on the left. This exceptional drawing records Gericault’s close observation of, and empathy for, these animals.

Guided by the extensive underdrawing, Gericault applied the paint broadly and vigorously. Some areas—like the mane of the roaring lion—have considerable impasto. Shadowed areas are thinly painted, and others left open, with the warm tone of the wood showing through, mainly around the paws and muzzles of the animals.

Examination of the X-radiograph (fig. 2) and the paint surface shows that the artist made changes in the background as he worked. Much of the background appears originally to have been painted deep blue, which shows through the upper paint layer along the top edge of the painting and all the way down to the roaring lion’s head. The red glow of the sunset originally extended around the heads of the fighting lionesses and was subsequently covered with dark paint, creating a starker silhouette for the head of the lioness on the left. To the right of the mountain was a pale, possibly moonlit cloud—imaged clearly in the X-radiograph—that was also painted out. The cloud seems to have been added at the same time as the mountains; in the X-radiograph, it stops at the shaded side of the mountain above the head of the roaring lion. It is not possible to give an exact sequence of changes in the background but the most likely scenario is that the artist initially painted a deep blue sky with a sunset that extended to the left of the fighting lionesses; subsequently, the cloud and mountains were added, covering over sunset to the left of the fighting lionesses, and finally, the cloud was painted out. The version of this composition on canvas in the Louvre is an almost direct copy of the painting as we now see it, though it has been cropped at the sides.

Charlotte Hale 2020

[1] From a photograph of the painting, Five Lions also appears to be ungrounded.
[2] Infrared reflectography was undertaken using an Indigo Systems Merlin near-infrared camera (InGaAs sensor range: 900-1700 nanometers) with a StingRay Optics macro lens optimized for this range, in conjunction with a National Instruments IMAQ PCI-1422 frame grabber card and IRvista 2.51 software.

Jean-Georges Schickler, Paris (until d. 1843); his son, baron Arthur de Schickler, Paris (1843–d. 1919); Schickler family, by descent (until 2010; sold through a European art dealer to Sayn-Wittgenstein); [Sayn-Wittgenstein Fine Art, New York, 2010–11; sold to The Met]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met Breuer]. "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," March 18–September 4, 2016, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 95).

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT.

Charles Clément. "Catalogue de l'œuvre de Gericault—Peinture." Gazette des beaux-arts 23 (September 1, 1867), pp. 281, 323, no. 64, under the heading "Peintures (1812 à 1816)," calls it "Lions," 47 x 58 1/2 cm, describes it as "trois lions et trois lionnes accroupis ou couchés près de débris et d'ossements," and locates it in the Schickler collection; dates the painting between the artist's return from Rome in 1817 and the moment he began "The Raft of the Medusa" in 1818 (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Charles Clément. Géricault: étude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre du maître. 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1867). Paris, 1868, pp. 116–17, 293, no. 68.

Charles Clément. Géricault, étude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre du maitre. 3rd ed. (1st ed. 1867). Paris, 1879, pp. 116–17, 293, no. 68, [in the "Supplement" by Lorenz Eitner appended to the reprint edition of Clément 1879 (New York, 1974, p. 451, no. 68), it is suggested that the work described by Clément might be Bazin 1997, no. 2357].

Philippe Grunchec in Tout l'oeuvre peint de Gericault. Paris, 1978, p. 109–10, no. 144, ill., calls it "Lions couchés," in a private collection, Paris; identifies it as Clément 1879, no. 68, stating that this connection and the quality of execution attest to its authenticity; considers the version in the Louvre (no. 144A) weak by comparison.

Germain Bazin with documentation by Élisabeth Raffy. Théodore Géricault, étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné. Vol. 7, Regard social et politique: Le séjour anglais et les heures de souffrance. Paris, 1997, pp. 32–33, 153, no. 2354, ill., calls it "Groupe de lions" and catalogues it as author unknown, the result of his not having seen it in person, but notes the high regard in which Grunchec [Ref. 1978] held this work.

Asher Ethan Miller in Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met Breuer]. New York, 2016, pp. 135, 291, colorpl. 95, states that its underlying subject is rooted in both the artist's imagination and the eighteenth-century idea of the Sublime; notes the artist's spontaneous approach, employing a rough wood board and no studies, and leaving it in the state of an "ébauche".

This work may not be lent.