The Tiger That Swallowed the Boy by John Simons

Author:John Simons
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907471810
Publisher: Libri Publishing

Van Amburgh’s displays reinforced two things. The first was the right of dominion that man enjoyed by divine decree over the rest of sentient creation. The second was the dominion of western empires (it is not accident that van Amburgh dressed like a Roman) over other cultures. The Duke of Wellington got the idea immediately and had, in 1847, commissioned Land-seer’s painting Portrait of Mr Van Amburgh as He Apppeared with his Animals at the London Theatres to hang in the drawing room at Apsley House with a special frame embellished with the verses from Genesis in which God gives the right of dominion to Man. This 1847 picture was Landseer’s second treatment of Van Amburgh’s act and it is worth comparing the two paintings for what they tell us about shifting attitudes to the display of wild animals and especially lions.

The first picture, Isaac Van Amburgh and his Animals, was produced in 1839 as a commission for Queen Victoria herself and it is still in the Royal Collection. The image shows Van Amburgh in his Roman clothing reclining in a cage with his lamb pressing close against him. A leopard is looking hungrily at the lamb, a huge lion is sitting peaceably and nobly behind him and a tiger (on whose head Van Amburgh is resting his hand) is snarling at a lioness. We the viewers are inside the cage with Van Amburgh and the animals and are part of the spectacle as through the bars we can see the audience depicted on an artificially small scale and peering somewhat anxiously and grimly at the events unfolding inside. Only one person, an African in western dress, appears uninterested and is looking away to the horizon – it is tempting to see in this a subtle and subdued comment on the likely attitude of the colonised to the coloniser. The picture is, nevertheless, designed as an accurate depiction of the kind of show the Queen would have seen and by situating the viewpoint inside the cage Landseer offers a reprise of the frisson the Queen must have enjoyed when she witnessed the savagery of the feeding. Equally, by placing the viewer in the cage Landseer enables him or her vicariously to participate in the act of domination depicted.

The Duke of Wellington’s picture, which was completed in 1849, is a very different affair. Here Van Amburgh is in his Daniel costume and is adopting a melodramatic pose. He is pointing at a lion who is cringing in the corner with his back to Van Amburgh and is folding his front legs in front of him in an almost sulky attitude. A lioness and leopard look cowed. A tiger snarls and another leopard looks as if it might pounce. Van Amburgh looks decidedly nervous. This is not the picture of a confident performance. The animals look as if they are kept in check only by the threat of the whip in Van Amburgh’s right hand, Van Amburgh looks far from at ease among the big cats, and the whole thing looks tawdry.

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