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Provenance: Bought from the artist by Mr. Earle;
Hugh Robert Hughes, Kinmel Park, Abergele, Wales by 1885;
J. Staats Forbes, by 1894;
His sale, Christie's London, 2υnd June 1916, lot 164 (bt. by Buck);
Anonymous sale, London, Robinson, Fisher & Harding, 8υth October 1925, lot 174;
with John Nicholson Gallery, New York, by 1959.
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Exhibited: London, British Institution, 1817, no. 176 (as 'A Lioness Disturbed');
London, Royal Academy, Old Master's Exhibition, 1885, no. 58;
London, Guildhall, 1894, no. 86;
Bristol, City Art Gallery, Animals in Art, 1908, no. 160;
Detroit and Philadelphia, Romantic Art in Britain, 1968, no. 110;
Lincoln, Massachusetts, Cambridge, New York, 19υth Century Paintings from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, May – August 1974, p. 76;
Monterrey, Mexico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Passage to the Present: Masterworks from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, 2007/8;
Phoenix, Mexico City, Flint, Greenwich, Memphis, Nashville, Masterpieces of European Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce, 2008-2010, no. 55.
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Literature: C. Reginald Grundy, James Ward R.A.; his Life and Works, London 1909, no. 566, p. 48, illus. p. 10;
J.S. Held, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Fundación Luis A. Ferré, Catalogue I, Paintings of the European and American Schools, Ponce 1965, pp. 192-93;
O. Beckett, The Life and Works of James Ward; The Forgotten Genius, Margate 1995, no. 186, p. 197
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Notes: This powerful and dramatic painting is rare and somewhat unusual in Ward's art, and represents an important development in the depiction of animals in British art. It portrays with startlingly accuracy and sympathetic observation a lioness at rest in a stormy landscape, her left paw holding down a heron which she has just trapped. The picture is important for the fact that it transcends the somewhat mundane and objective animal portraiture of previous decades, to present a new model for their representation within the visual arts; one which demands an emotional response. As such Ward's snarling lioness, disturbed from her prey by some unseen intrusion, breaks with established visual traditions. Indeed the artist himself understood the singular nature of the painting, writing to a correspondent on 11th April 1848 that "the world knows nothing of what I can do in that way but from Mr. Earle's picture." Contemporary critics were also aware of its importance; the reviewer of the annual exhibition held at the British Institution singled it out for particular praise when it was shown there in 1817:
'The Lioness disturbed in devouring a Heron, is a noble representation of savage nature. The expression of rage is astonishingly fine. The bold line of the distant mountains; the majestic volume of clouds sailing along the skies; the deep hued blue-ish and purple-ish tints in the off-skip; with the verdurous browns of the near scenery; and the solemn brightness and impressive union of the whole, confer an imposing grandeur on this commanding picture'. [i]
As a subject, animals had fascinated Ward from early in his career, and he would go on to become the most important animal painter of his generation. In addition to depictions of horses, dogs and other domesticated animals – long a staple of British art – the artist became fascinated by wild and exotic beasts, and they were the subject of some of his most successful and dramatic pictures. Lioness with a Heron exemplifies this aspect of Ward's art, combining a nascent romantic temperament with his own interest in the painting of earlier artists. In both its composition and subject matter it demonstrates his intimacy with the art of the Flemish old masters, including Rubens and Frans Snyders. The painting was equally influential on contemporary artists, both in England and across the Channel in France. Ward's dramatic landscape, which must surely have been seen by Delacroix whilst he was in London in 1817, is echoed in many of the latter's most celebrated paintings. Both he and the other celebrated French master of Romanticism, Théodore Géricault, were heavily influenced by Ward's Rubensian depictions of animals; and in its poignancy the present work epitomises the essence of that movement.
Though A Lioness with a Heron emanates from the conventions set by Jacques-Laurent Agasse and other artists of his generation, Ward's image illustrates the developing understanding of animal psychology of his own generation. In so doing it reflects contemporary anatomical theory, as expounded by the anatomist Sir Charles Bell, who had written a treatise on expression for the use of artists in 1806. Bell, along with Ward and other artists such as B. R. Haydon and Sir Edwin Landseer, strove for an art which represented animals with their own instinctive responses, rather than with human emotions wedded to animal physiognomies (for which earlier masters such as Rubens were soundly criticized). Indeed, Ward made a number of drawings studying the anatomy of animals, and some of lions in particular. Two drawings of a lion (or lioness), shown écorché, which date to circa 1801-2, thus antedating Bell's treatise, demonstrate the artist's own interest and careful study of the animal and its musculature (see figs. 1 and 2).
More so than almost any of Ward's other paintings Lioness with a Heron is a perfect illustration of the impact on the visual arts of contemporary developments in the scientific understanding of natural phenomena in the early 19υth century in Britain. As a work of art it encapsulates the subsequent revolution in man's understanding of animal psychology and appreciation for the natural world. Like much of his best work it is thrilling in both its composition and handling of paint. Its dramatisation of both animal anatomy and natural landscape elicited praise on both sides of the Channel, and in its engagement with the emotions and responses of its subject matter anticipates the greatest works of both Géricault and Landseer.
i. The Literary Gazette, London, February 15, 1817, no. IV, p. 59.
