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A section of Eugène Delacroix's Study of Reclining Lions Hôtel Drouot
French auctioneer Malo de Lussac was examining the contents of a property in France’s central region of Touraine when he came across a treasure: an original oil-on-canvas painting by Eugène Delacroix, one of France’s great 19th-century Romantic artists.
Titled Study of Reclining Lions, the previously unknown painting has been owned by the same family since the mid-1800s, as La Nouvelle République’s Julien Proult reports. Later this month, it’s heading to auction, where it’s expected to fetch up to $330,000.
“The owners were not sure that it was a Delacroix,” De Lussac tells Agence France-Presse (AFP), per a translation by Artnet’s Brian Boucher. “When I arrived in the living room, my gaze was attracted by his magnetism. It was very moving. Delacroix’s works are seen very regularly in museums but very little in private hands.”
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The 24- by 20-inch canvas had been hanging in a family's living room. Hôtel Drouot
The 24- by 20-inch canvas depicts seven lions lounging “in a palette of ochres and deep browns,” according to a statement from Hôtel Drouot, an auction house in Paris. The lions’ bodies are visibly muscular, and their expressive faces are framed by flowing manes. Six of the animals are depicted in detail, while the seventh is a simple line sketch.
Born in 1798, Delacroix made his artistic debut at the Paris Salon, a prestigious exhibition sponsored by the French government, in 1822, when he showed his first masterwork, The Barque of Dante. The young artist’s work was characterized by rich, vivid colors, and he quickly became a leader of the Romantic movement. One of his most famous pieces is Liberty Leading the People, painted in response to the July Revolution of 1830.
Liberty Leading the People
Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix, 1830 Eugène Delacroix / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Delacroix was also partial to “wild beasts,” especially lions, which he painted often, per the statement. The artist frequented the Jardin des Plantes menagerie in Paris, which housed captive tigers and lions. He also studied taxidermy and observed animal dissections on several occasions.
“How necessary it is to … stick one’s head out of doors and try to read from creation, which has nothing in common with cities and the works of man,” Delacroix once wrote.
When one of the menagerie’s lions, Coco, died in 1829, Delacroix wrote to inform his friend, sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, with whom he’d often observed the animals. “The lion is dead,” Delacroix wrote. “Ride at full speed!”
Over about a decade, Delacroix painted a series called The Lion Hunt, which depicted violent confrontations between lions and horsemen bearing swords, spears and shields. Writing for Artnet in 2018, critic Ben Davis called one of these works—Study for Lion Hunt (1855–56)—a “career-summarizing manifesto” and an example of “art as the quest for intense sensation.”
The recently discovered Study of Reclining Lions comes with two pieces of documentation, according to the lot listing: a 1973 certificate from collector Pierre Dieterle and a 1966 letter written by Lee Johnson, a Delacroix specialist. The painting’s back is also marked with the wax seal from Delacroix’s studio sale, which occurred the year after his death in 1863.
This painting is De Lussac’s second big discovery in the past two years: In 2023, he appraised a piece that turned out to be an authentic work by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a famous 17th-century Flemish artist. “I was very, very surprised,” De Lussac told the Washington Post’s Jonathan Edwards in 2023. It sold for about $850,000.
Study of Reclining Lions is now on display at Hôtel Drouot, where it will be auctioned on March 28.