oldpainting:

Tiger by Eugène Delacroix, 1830.

This is by far my favourite painting of Eugène Delacroix’s. This simple capturing of a tiger speaks to a multitude of things I’ve been considering these past few weeks leading up to my journey to Bangladesh, which is now just a few short days away. 

Delacroix was a romantic painter of French extraction, and while it is suspected that he may have had a bastard birth, it was clear that he was destined for greatness early into his career. Easily his most recognisable painting is ‘Liberty Leading the People’ (1830), but in his lifetime he produced a wealth of paintings, sketches, and many lithographs on a variety of topics. 

In later years, he also became fascinated by Eastern cultures and became something of an Orientalist painter. Everything I know of Delacroix suggests that he was like many of his other contemporaries and viewed non-Christian, European cultures with intense curiosity. He attempted to paint women in Algiers, though he struggled with conservative Muslim customs. On the whole, though, it seems he viewed particularly the non-European North African people as curiously primitive, and reminiscent of Greek and Roman times which he was so fascinated by. He used their images and the images of their country to inspire some of the work that he left behind, while in others, he was forced to use his imagination - such as here. 

Delacroix probably only ever saw a tiger in the Paris zoo, but the image seems to have stuck with him considerably. He would produce a number of paintings, sketches, and lithographs of the animals, reportedly using the trips to the zoo, and sometimes his cat at home to help shape his impressions of these majestic creatures. His experience was limited, though I think his intentions (relative to his time) were positive, and so he filled in the blanks and drew on what resources he had. In short: he stereotyped, he assumed, and as such, he fell victim to many of the prejudices of his age. He is a romantic - and a dedicated one at that - but this did not make him infallible, and nor did his images, well-intentioned as they were, share any infallibility, either. 

As I travel and experience the world, I want to always think back to Delacroix and his tigers. He intended to portray the world as best as he could and to show the best and worst parts of it accurately, and, most importantly, with feeling - but his representations were never totally unbiased, and in some cases, even completely accurate. If I am to go out in the world and try and capture parts of it in my own way, I must always be aware of these biases and handicaps, whether that is my race, my class, my sexuality, or even my country - these afford me privileges and more importantly, colour the way in which I see the world. The day I start pretending that what I see is what the rest of the world sees - well, let’s just say I might as well be thinking tabbies are tigers.

(Source: purplu)