Tiger and Snake

A tiger crouches low on a sunlit bank, ears pinned back and fangs bared at a snake that coils twice around a gnarled tree trunk, its forked tongue flicking between gaping jaws. The white fur of the tiger’s belly glows against the gold, green and mustard of the grass, while the snake’s skin catches the light as it tightens around the bark — a duel of predator and prey painted with startling immediacy. Eugène Delacroix signed and dated this late work in 1862, the year before his death, when the ferocious energy of his animal subjects had become a signature of his Romanticism. The picture passed through the collection of William Andrews Clark before his bequest to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1926. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.