This year is the Year of the Tiger. In the Zodiac, the tiger is considered a symbol of bravery and agility, as can be seen in cultures and arts around the world. However, unlike Chinese artists who paint tigers, many artists from other countries have difficulty seeing tigers in person. In Japan, painters paint tigers based on cats, and the tigers in their pens looked closer to cute cats. In France, a zoo established at the end of the 18th century became a source of inspiration for artists to depict animals, and famous painters such as Delacroix and Henri Rousseau went to sketch and represent the tiger in their eyes in different styles.
Japan: Yoneko Gatora
Tigers are not native to Japan, but have existed in China for thousands of years and are commonly found in ancient Chinese art. Since Chinese art has a great influence on Japan, it is not difficult to understand the Japanese demand for tiger painting. Around the 14th and 19th centuries, Japanese samurai were particularly fond of artwork depicting tigers, for whom the tiger was a symbol of strength.
To meet this demand, many Japanese painters began to study Chinese tiger portraits. However, they had never seen a real tiger, and no one dared to introduce this dangerous animal from abroad. So the painters began to model cats, because it was the closest substitute they could find to the tiger. That's why, unlike Chinese tiger paintings, the tiger in Japanese paintings looks cuter, but also stiffer.
"Cat (or Tiger)", Xianya Yifan
"Bamboo Tiger Picture Screen" (left), Katayama Poplar Valley
Maruyama (1733–1795) is considered to be the first Japanese painter to depict a real tiger. He was a master of sketching. Although Maruyama still did not come into contact with the real tiger, he obtained a complete tiger skin and measured various proportions from it. As a result, people at the time found that the tiger he painted looked more frightening, more realistic, and more vivid.
Round Mountain should hold up the tiger in the pen
After Maruyama's death, his apprentice Kishi komagata became one of Japan's most famous realist painters. In addition to the tiger skin, kishi was given specimens and scalps of the tiger's limbs. He studied it up close, counting the number of tiger teeth, the number of leg joints, and various anatomical details that his teacher had not been able to discover. Such research led him to paint a tiger that was more realistic than anyone in the past.
Even so, Kishiko's tiger still has limitations, which can be seen in the eyes of the tiger: kishiko's tiger's eyes are more like cat's eyes than tiger's eyes. In fact, unless painters can see living and real animals with their own eyes, they cannot draw realistic eyes.
Kishi komagata's tiger
Kishi koma founded his own school, the Kishi school, which lasted until the end of the 19th century. Kishi Takedo, the last head of the school, met the living Tiger: a foreign circus came to Kyoto. Kishi koma was deeply shocked: the real tiger and the king master painting are very different. Some say he almost lost his mind as a result, and in the paintings that followed, he had the illusion of seeing a tiger. In 1893, a tiger painted by Kishi Bamboo Hall appeared at the Columbus Memorial Exposition in Chicago and won a bronze medal.
Kishi Takedo's tiger
India and Vietnam: Agility, Bravery and Power
In India, the tiger is one of the symbols of the country, the tiger occupies an important place in Indian culture, it is a combination of elegance and strength, agility and strength, meaning excellence, strength, beauty and bravery. In 1972, the Bengal tiger became the national beast of India. Tigers also play an important role in Hinduism: the goddess Durga's mount is either a tiger or a lion.
Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), the ruler of the Mysore kingdom of South India, was fascinated by the tiger, which became a symbol of his power and status: his throne was studded with gold tiger ornaments, his coins were printed with tiger stripes, his palace was decorated with tiger paintings, his swords and guns were infused with tiger heads and tiger stripes in shape and decoration, and the small bronze mortars made for his army were also in the shape of Crouching Tiger. Those firing deadly rocket weapons at the British wore striped tunics.
Tip's Tiger
Among the many cultural relics, "Tip's Tiger" is the most famous one. Ironically, this wooden mechanical toy for The Tipu Sultan depicts a tiger attacking a victim who is depicted as a British soldier, triggering a mechanism located on the tiger's hind legs, whose arms rise and fall, making a groaning sound like dying. This toy, almost as large as a physical object, reveals Sultan Tipp's love for tigers and hatred for the British, while also showing the exquisite craftsmanship of the Kingdom of Mysore during his reign. Ironically, the work, currently in the collection of the British V&A Museum, ended up as a trophy for the colonists, like most of His Tip's objects.
Stone statue of a Vietnamese tiger
In Vietnam, tigers also appear in a large number of cultural relics. The symbols of the tiger image have changed over time, including religion, kingship or folklore, and in any case, the tiger has a place in Vietnamese art. Recently, in the exhibition "Tigers in Vietnamese Art" held in Hanoi, a group of tiger sculptures excavated from the 17th and 18th centuries royal tombs can be seen. Usually, such sculptures are placed at the front door of the mausoleum as psychic animals to guard the royal tomb. In the introduction of another stone statue of a tiger made circa 1264, it is written that "the tiger is in a state of rest, but it looks up with its head up." The folded legs and long tail add a hint of masculinity. The tiger's body is presented as a stretched body and solid lines, depicting its bravery.
France: Zoo sketches and exoticism
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes (Zoos attached to the Botanical Garden) in Paris became a source of inspiration for many artists to depict animals. The zoo was built in 1794 and most of its animals come from the private collection of the Palace of Versailles, which was abandoned because of the French Revolution. These exotic animals attracted a large number of artists to sketch, including Delacroix, Henri Rousseau, Jean-Léon Gér me, and others.
Zoo attached to the Botanical Garden of Paris
Artists sketch in the Paris Zoo
Delacroix was fascinated by the natural world. In the 1820s, he began studying cats through the resources of the Paris Zoo. In his beautiful and shuddering lithograph Royal Tiger, Delacroix shows his romantic preference for depicting scenes of tragedy, pain and violence. In the oil painting A Young Tiger Playing with Its Mother, he turns to depicting the intimacy between mother and child. The work, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1831, is said to have borrowed from Rubens in some places and, in contrast to Delacroix's brutal tiger, shows his capture of different tiger behaviors.
The Royal Tiger, Delacroix
The Baby Tiger Playing with Its Mother, Delacroix
Through these works, we can see how Delacroix expressed human emotions by anthropomorphizing savage or domesticated animals. For example, he once wrote, "Man kills like a tiger and a wolf." His friend, the French poet Théophile Gautier, found common ground between Delacroix himself and the "big cats" he depicted: "His yellow-brown eyes, with a cat-like expression, slender lips clinging to the flamboyant teeth, strong cheekbones accentuating the lines of his hard jaws... Give his facial features a wild, bizarre, exotic and astonishing beauty. ”
The animal paintings of the French classicist painter Jean-Leu-Le-Gerome are also attributed to his research at the Paris Zoo. In Tiger and Cubs, Jerome shows the kind of flat, direct, soft approach he began in the 1880s. Some speculate that the painting was made in 1884, when the artist exhibited another work of Tiger Nocturnal walking at the Paris Salon.
The Tiger and the Cub, Jean-Leo Jerome
The Unexpected (aka Tiger in a Tropical Storm), by Henri Rousseau
Tiger Fighting Buffalo, Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau, who had no academic education, was called a "naïve" artist, and he was regarded as a symbolist artist because of the dreaminess of his works. Rousseau's tigers are more exotic. He never left the country, but during his military service, he heard hearsay from his colleagues about the stunning landscapes of the subtropical country. He translates observations from the Paris Zoo into exotic works, such as The Unexpected (aka Tiger in a Tropical Storm), written in 1891, which shows a tiger illuminated by lightning and preparing to pounce on its prey in the fierce wind. The tiger's prey does not appear on the canvas, but is left to the viewer's imagination. Despite its simple appearance, Rousseau's jungle paintings are carefully laid out layer by layer, using a large number of green tones to depict the vitality of the jungle.