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Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century
An innovative examination of encounters between humans and lions and representations of these charismatic animals in the visual culture of postrevolutionary France
In artistic traditions that stretch back to antiquity, lions have been associated with strength and authority. The figure of the lion in nineteenth-century France stood at a crossroads between these historical meanings and contemporary developments that recast the animal’s significance, such as the literal presence of lions in public menageries.
In this highly original study, Katie Hornstein explores the relationships among animals, spectatorship, and visual production. She examines the fascinating encounters between artists, viewers, and lions that took place—in menageries and circuses, on canvases, and on the pages of books—and out of which, she argues, new perceptions of power, empire, and the natural world emerged.
Myth and Menagerie considers a range of visual objects, bringing into dialogue photographs of circus animals, hunting manuals, and zoo guidebooks with sculptures, drawings, and paintings by artists such as Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, and Rosa Bonheur. Illuminating the lives of individual lions against the backdrop of societal change and colonial expansion, Hornstein constructs a fresh theoretical framework for thinking about animals as more than symbols or passive subjects and for acknowledging a history in which both humans and animals had a stake.
In artistic traditions that stretch back to antiquity, lions have been associated with strength and authority. The figure of the lion in nineteenth-century France stood at a crossroads between these historical meanings and contemporary developments that recast the animal’s significance, such as the literal presence of lions in public menageries.
In this highly original study, Katie Hornstein explores the relationships among animals, spectatorship, and visual production. She examines the fascinating encounters between artists, viewers, and lions that took place—in menageries and circuses, on canvases, and on the pages of books—and out of which, she argues, new perceptions of power, empire, and the natural world emerged.
Myth and Menagerie considers a range of visual objects, bringing into dialogue photographs of circus animals, hunting manuals, and zoo guidebooks with sculptures, drawings, and paintings by artists such as Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, and Rosa Bonheur. Illuminating the lives of individual lions against the backdrop of societal change and colonial expansion, Hornstein constructs a fresh theoretical framework for thinking about animals as more than symbols or passive subjects and for acknowledging a history in which both humans and animals had a stake.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 9, 2024
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December 16, 2025
With a brilliant writing style and an exceptional care turned toward the subjects of its study, Myth and Menagerie looks with detail and sensitivity at the lions in nineteenth century works of art—some famous and some generally dismissed as beneath the traditional gaze of the art historian. More importantly, Hornstein really asks us to rethink these paintings, lithographs, and sculptures of lions as images that document the intimacy of lions and humans, the relations between these animals and ourselves. What emerges in this book is the way that these images tell stories of the forms of dominance and desire (both of which are persistently gendered and racialized in Hornstein's account) that persisted among lions and humans in the nineteenth century. Hornstein teaches us to see these images differently, to look for something else when we look at artists' renderings of lions. I loved this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review