Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! Taking a look at SLAM’s beastly works

The Saint Louis Zoo isn’t the only place where you can see lions, tigers, and bears (oh, my!). More than 150 works at SLAM feature lions, 28 feature tigers, and nearly 40 feature bears. While the animals represented in the Museum’s collection are not as animated as our Forest Park neighbors, they are equally as majestic.

Lions

Ceiling Tile (socarrat) with Design of a Lion

Overlaying the lively animal decorating the surface, this tile bears the stamp of the kilns at Paterna, just outside Valencia, Spain. It would have decorated a ceiling inside a local building, suspended between wooden rafters. The term for such ceiling tiles is socarrat, which means “burnt” in the local dialect, referring to the process of baking in the kiln. Before they were baked, such tiles were painted with a white slip (clay thinned with water) and then with black and red pigments derived from manganese and iron. They were not glazed. The lion on this tile appears to be panting while his tail swishes through the air.

This work is currently on view in Gallery 237. 

Figure Group Portraying Lion and Birds

This altarpiece was part of the royal regalia of King Glèlè, the Fon monarch who reigned from 1858 to the end of the 19th century in what was then called the Kingdom of Dahomey. The 19th-century British explorer Captain Sir Richard Burton described the king as tall, lithe, agile, and broad at the shoulders, all qualities befitting the description of a lion. Indeed, King Glèlè took the lion as his personal symbol. This piece probably rested on an altar and served as a support for the king’s royal scepter. It was discovered buried in the earth after the European capture of the palace of King Béhanzin. 

This work is currently on view in Gallery 243. 

The Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī on a Lion

The central figure here is Mañjusri, Lord of Wisdom and one of the most important deities in the Buddhist pantheon. Crowned with a jeweled tiara and dressed in vibrantly colored silks of contrasting red, green, and gold, he is shown under a royal canopy encircled by a halo and multicolored clouds. Mañjusri sits on a lotus throne atop his vehicle: a lion leashed by a groomed attendant. The young child Sudhana, who stands in adoration on the viewer’s left, identifies the scriptural reference of this hanging scroll as the Flower Garland Sútra, in which Mañjusri assists the child on a quest for enlightenment. 

Lion and Tiger

This pair of scrolls features cropped views of a lion in profile and a tiger in three-quarter view. The lion as a subject had long intrigued the artist Takeuchi Seihō, who imagined this feline to be more like the Chinese lion (karashishi), a legendary dog-sized animal. During his early travels to Europe at the turn of the 20th century, he wrote: 

“I went to a zoo every day while I visited Antwerp, Belgium. At the time, no one imagined that there would ever be a zoo in Japan; therefore, I put off my departure for three weeks in order to create drawings of this animal from different angles. While most painters do not wish to understand the actual nature of a lion, I did. Furthermore, I did additional research about lions making it even more challenging to capture the true nature of the lion.”

Tigers

Tiger Devouring a Gavial

A tiger grips its claws around a young gavial (a type of crocodile native to India) and devours it as the reptile, in agony, shows its fangs; a turtle emerges from beneath the tiger’s right foreleg. Antoine-Louis Barye carefully studied the anatomy of tigers in the Paris Zoo, the Jardin des Plantes, and succeeded in rendering the tense energy of the large cat’s form. This bronze is one of several smaller versions of a successful larger sculpture. 

This work is currently on view in Pauline Gehner Mesker Gallery 205.

Ornament in the Form of a Crouching Tiger

This flat, translucent jade plaque of a crouching tiger with curled-up tail is carved from pale brown jade with faintly green striations. There are double-line engraved spirals on the body on both sides, and the animal’s mouth is represented as open. The eye is perforated. In traditional Chinese culture, tigers are a symbol of strength, bravery, and protection.  

This work is currently on view in Bakewell Gallery 233.

First Future

Max Klinger’s formidable tiger blocks the way through a narrow rocky gorge. This print is part of a series entitled Eve and the Future which juxtaposes three depictions of the biblical Eve’s original sin with three “futures,” or imagined visions of her sin’s consequences. This is the first future, showing the bleakness of Eve’s life when there is no way back to paradise. Klinger’s evocative imagery made him an important precursor of the German Expressionist movement. 

This work can be viewed upon request in the Museum’s Print Study Room.

Tiger

This rare woodblock print comes from one of the most important moments of Franz Marc’s short career after he encountered French Cubism and Futurism. The crouching tigers in tropical vegetation are conceived through bold forceful lines and simplified rhythmic shapes. Marc used a non-naturalistic vocabulary to depict the essence and spirit of the animals and show them in unity with their natural surroundings. He ascribed a spiritual purity to wild animals that he found lacking in man.
This work can be viewed upon request in the Museum’s Print Study Room.

Bears

Bowl 

For over a millennium, Native artists in coastal British Columbia and Southeast Alaska have used sinuous lines with ovoid and U-form shapes to create imagery called “formline.” Historically, artists learned formline carving and painting through apprenticeship with a master. At the end of the 19th century, territorial governments in Alaska and British Columbia imposed restrictions on ceremonial life, which in turn, provided a major context for production of formline designs. In the first years of the 20th century, Native artists began to reconstruct formline vocabularies on their own based on observations of historic artworks, rather than training through apprenticeship. This work shows how Northwest Coast art changed at the end of the 19th century; artists blended the historical formline system with shapes observed from nature. 

This work is currently on view in Interco Charitable Trust Gallery 326.

Bear Jug

This rare, covered container of off-white clay is in the form of a bear clutching a dog to its chest. Flat, handle-like arms protrude from the front. The removable bear’s head lid bares two rows of jagged, zigzag teeth. Bear jugs were inspired by bear baiting, a spectator sport outlawed in England in 1835. Some bear jugs may have served as tobacco jars, others as ale jugs or pub ornaments.  

This work is currently on view in Gallery 136.