A Tiger Hunt

Emerging from a dark, rocky outcrop scattered with blasted pines is a moment of high drama, as human, dogs and horses do battle with two snarling tigers, in a tangle of movement. The central figure in a turban, red jacket and green trousers, raises his spear to bring down upon the small tiger. His horse rears back, with flared nostrils and eyes rolling in fright, much like the spooked, riderless horse which emerges from the dark background. Another figure on foot endeavours to fend off the second small tiger to protect his comrade who lies, disarmed and clothes torn, upon the ground. The strong diagonal composition of this painting adds drama to the ferocious hunt unfolding. The artist Peter Francis Bourgeois (1753-1811) was likely inspired by The Tiger Hunt (Musée des Beaux Arts, Rennes) by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) which was well-known through prints. While Bourgeois was following in the footsteps of the ‘Old Masters’, this fictional painting includes stereotyped stock figures – a westernised, colonial imagining of the Indian subcontinent where tiger hunting was known to take place. Bourgeois’ painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1787.  

Bourgeois was a painter and collector active in London, and one of the three founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery. In 1768, when he was fifteen, his mother died and he and his sister were abandoned by their father. He was taken into the protection of the art dealer Noel Joseph Desenfans (1741-1807), by whom he was encouraged to continue his arts education and was introduced to the world of collecting and dealing.  Desenfans sent him to study painting with the artist Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812). In 1776, at the age of twenty-three, Bourgeois made a tour of Europe and, on his return, moved back to the Desenfans household where he remained with his benefactors for the rest of his life, painting and amassing the pictures that now form a large part of the Dulwich Picture Gallery collection.