Lion Paintings: 12 Famous Wild Icons of Art
Lions have prowled through art for centuries, from biblical dens to moonlit deserts. The most famous lion paintings include Henri Rousseau Sleeping Gypsy, Rubens Daniel in the Lions Den, Delacroix Lion Hunt and Durer Saint Jerome engraving.
The lion is the animal every painter wanted to tame. Some studied real lions in royal menageries. Others invented them from statues, zoo sketches and pure imagination. What they left behind is a gallery of power, fear, faith and dream.
The dreamer: Rousseau never left France, yet painted the most haunting lions of all.
From life: Rubens and Rembrandt drew real lions kept in Antwerp and Amsterdam.
The oldest here: Durer engraved his gentle lion beside Saint Jerome in 1514.
The myth we correct: that Delacroix and Stubbs witnessed their savage scenes in person.
If these draw you in, you will also love 7 secrets hidden in famous paintings, is Goya the greatest painter of all time, and 21 famous painters with their cats.
1. Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy
A woman in a striped robe sleeps in a moonlit desert, her mandolin beside her. A lion leans over her, sniffing, its tail rigid. Rousseau painted this quiet standoff in 1897, at the height of his self taught career.
Rousseau tried to sell it to the mayor of his hometown, Laval, calling it a genre picture. Nobody bought it. The painting then vanished for decades, and when it resurfaced in the 1920s some experts doubted it was real. It was.
Today it hangs at MoMA, where visitors still argue over one question Rousseau never answered, is the lion about to attack, or simply curious.
2. Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions Den
Daniel sits among nine lions, hands clasped in prayer, eyes turned up to a shaft of light. Rubens painted this life size scene in Antwerp in the mid 1610s. The lions yawn, stretch and stare straight at us.
These were not imagined. Rubens studied lions from life in the menagerie of the Spanish governors in Brussels, then reused the same animals from different angles across the canvas. Count them and you find the same beast turning its head.
Rubens kept the picture for years and later traded it to the English ambassador for a group of antique marbles. He knew exactly what it was worth.
3. Eugene Delacroix, Lion Hunt
Horses rear, hunters slash, and a lion sinks its claws into flesh in a tangle of bodies. Delacroix painted this version in 1861, near the end of his life, in flaming reds and deep shadow.
Here is the twist. Delacroix never saw a lion hunt. He built the whole scene from his 1832 trip to Algeria, from costume studies, and from hours sketching big cats at the Paris zoo. An earlier, larger Lion Hunt of 1855 was damaged in a fire in 1870.
The Chicago canvas was Delacroix answering Rubens across two centuries. He owned prints of Rubens hunts and treated them as a challenge to beat.
4. Albrecht Durer, Saint Jerome in His Study
In a sunlit study, Saint Jerome writes at his desk while a lion dozes on the floor beside a sleeping dog. Durer cut this scene into copper in 1514, every detail razor sharp.
The lion comes from a legend in the Golden Legend. Jerome pulled a thorn from a wild lion paw, and the grateful animal never left his side. Durer beast is not fierce. It is a loyal pet in a scholar warm room.
This is one of Durer three great prints, alongside Melencolia I and Knight, Death and the Devil. Impressions sit in museums worldwide, each one struck from the same 1514 plate.
5. Jean Leon Gerome, The Two Majesties
A single lion sits on a rocky ledge, back to us, gazing across an empty desert at the setting sun. Gerome painted this in 1883, all silence and gold light.
The title names two rulers. The lion, king of the beasts, and the sun, king of the sky. Gerome leaned on his North African travels for the landscape, but the mood is pure invention, a meditation on solitude rather than a wildlife study.
The animal never turns to face us. That refusal is the whole point, and it is why the picture keeps drawing crowds in Milwaukee.
6. George Stubbs, A Lion Attacking a Horse
A white horse screams as a lion lands on its back, claws deep in the flank. Stubbs painted this terror in 1762 for a young English nobleman London home.
The popular story says Stubbs saw such an attack in North Africa. Art historians treat that as legend. His real source was an antique marble statue of a lion mauling a horse that he could have studied in Rome or through casts.
Stubbs returned to this one subject about seventeen times over thirty years. Even Gericault later copied it. One scene of animal panic became a lifelong obsession.
7. Peter Paul Rubens, The Lion Hunt
Two lions twist into a wall of spears, horses and falling men. Rubens finished this huge canvas in 1621, the climax of a series of hunt pictures he made in these years.
Delacroix called it his favorite of all Rubens hunts. He admired the fearful confusion, the diagonal of bodies crashing together. This one painting shaped how the whole Romantic generation drew violence.
Look closely and the chaos is engineered. Every limb pushes the eye along a single sweeping line, from the lower corner up through the impaled lion. Rubens hid strict order inside the frenzy.
8. Rosa Bonheur, El Cid
A lion head fills the frame, tawny mane blazing, eyes almost human. Rosa Bonheur painted this portrait in 1879 and named it after the Spanish hero El Cid.
Bonheur fell for lions during the siege of Paris in 1870 and studied them at the zoo and circus. She later kept live lions at her chateau. One lioness, Fathma, followed her like a dog and mourned when Bonheur traveled.
The picture arrived at the Prado in 1879 as a gift. It hangs there still, a woman tribute to an animal she treated as royalty and as family.
9. Briton Riviere, Daniel in the Lions Den
Daniel stands barefoot with his back to us, hands calmly crossed, ringed by a pride of lions. Riviere painted this in 1872 and stripped out the drama entirely.
There is no angel, no beam of light, no miracle on show. Just a man refusing to look afraid, and lions whose faces range from curiosity to wary calm. The stillness does the work that thunder usually does.
Riviere trained as an animal painter and it shows. Every lion has its own mood. Turning Daniel away from us was the daring move, and it makes the pride the real cast.
10. Henri Rousseau, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope
A lion buries its teeth in an antelope neck under a blood red sun, while an owl, a panther and shadowy shapes watch from the leaves. Rousseau painted this jungle in 1905.
It hung at the Salon d Automne of 1905, in the same room where a critic mocked the wild colors of Matisse and Derain and gave Fauvism its name, the wild beasts. Rousseau real wild beast prowled right beside them.
Rousseau built his jungle from the Paris botanical gardens and picture books. He never saw a lion in the wild. The most feral scene here came from a quiet civil servant with a sketchbook.
11. Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom
A lion lies down beside a lamb, an ox and a small child in a soft green clearing. Hicks, a Quaker minister, painted this vision of Isaiah prophecy around 1834.
In the background, tiny figures show William Penn signing his treaty with the Lenape people. For Hicks, peace between lion and lamb and peace between settlers and Native Americans were the same dream.
He painted this subject roughly sixty times across his life. Each version is a little different, and the lion, meant to be tame, always keeps a flicker of the wild.
12. Rembrandt van Rijn, Lion Resting
A lion sprawls on the ground, chin low, watching, drawn in a few loaded strokes of brown ink. Rembrandt made this study in Amsterdam around 1650 to 1652.
This is a real lion, not a symbol. Live lions were brought to Dutch cities as attractions, and Rembrandt sketched them straight from life. In a handful of lines he caught the weight, the mane and the boredom.
No drama, no hunt, no saint. Just an animal at rest, seen by one of history sharpest eyes. Small sheets like this are why people still study how Rembrandt looked at the world.
Where to see them
National Gallery of Art, Washington: Rubens Daniel in the Lions Den, Durer Saint Jerome, and Edward Hicks Peaceable Kingdom.
Museum of Modern Art, New York: Henri Rousseau The Sleeping Gypsy.
Art Institute of Chicago: Delacroix Lion Hunt of 1861.
Louvre, Paris: Rembrandt ink study Lion Resting.
Museo del Prado, Madrid: Rosa Bonheur lion portrait El Cid.
What the lion carries
Many of these are history paintings of Daniel or the hunt, where the lion stands for danger, faith and raw power.
Others are Romantic visions and dreamlike scenes, and Rembrandt quiet ink drawing shows the animal simply as itself.
Lions in art, questions people ask
What is the most famous lion painting? Henri Rousseau The Sleeping Gypsy of 1897, at MoMA, is probably the best known, thanks to its dreamlike lion looming over a sleeping traveler.
Did old master painters use real lions? Some did. Rubens studied lions in a Brussels menagerie, and Rembrandt sketched live lions in Amsterdam. Delacroix and Rousseau invented theirs from zoos and imagination.
Why do so many lion paintings show Daniel in the lions den? The biblical story of Daniel, saved from hungry lions by his faith, gave painters danger, drama and a happy ending. Rubens and Briton Riviere both painted famous versions.
Which lion painting shows a lion and the sun? Jean Leon Gerome The Two Majesties of 1883, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, pairs a solitary lion with the setting sun as two kinds of king.
Where can I see famous lion paintings? MoMA, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Louvre and the Prado all hold major lion works.
The lion that was never in the room
Here is the thread running through almost every painting above. The fiercer the lion, the less likely the artist ever faced one. Rousseau built his jungles from a Paris greenhouse. Delacroix staged his hunt from zoo sketches. Stubbs worked from a statue. The lions that feel most alive were dreamed up, not observed. When Rousseau Hungry Lion first showed in 1905, it hung in the room that gave us the word Fauvism, the wild beasts. The tamest man in Paris had painted the wildest animal in the building.