In 1832, two years after the French conquest of the Regency of Algiers, Delacroix traveled to North Africa as part of a diplomatic mission alongside Charles de Mornay. From his direct experience in Morocco and Algeria—made accessible to him by French colonialism—he produced detailed notebooks and copious sketches that would feed his imagination for years to come. Painted decades later, “Lion Hunt” draws on that mine of memories and images, as well as drawings he made with his sculptor friend Antoine-Louis Barye at the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and his knowledge of the hunting scenes of 17th-century artist Peter Paul Rubens. Devoid of geographical and temporal specificity, this constructed scene of human and animal conflict utilizes contrasting colors and a swirling, chaotic composition for dramatic effect. Yet, with its vague references to North Africa, this painting can also be seen to cast the “Orient”—a Western ideological construct—as violent, while eschewing the inherent oppressive power dynamics of the French colonial regime.

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