Tiger Hunt

The hunt in which the horse is also prey

Most hunting pictures in this register put the animal in one role: it carries the hunter and it crosses the ground. A hunt whose quarry is a large predator puts it in two. The horse is transport and it is also within reach of the thing being hunted, and pictures of the subject are built on that double exposure. The register holds a related cluster to read this against — six titles in which a lion, a tiger or a jaguar attacks, frightens or devours a horse, with no hunt involved at all. Between them those two groups cover the whole relationship: the animal as instrument of the hunt and the animal as its object.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1854 and the location is the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The dimensions are 73.5 x 92.5 cm. Orientalism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The record files the work under Animal Art and Animal Art > Horse, and adds cultural heritage, mythology and fantasy headings, and the measured colour family of the image is brown.

A caution about the title

This catalogue holds a second work by a different painter whose title is also a tiger hunt. Titles repeat across the register, which is why every entry here is keyed to a Master ID rather than to a name.