Couple de tigres au repos, c. 1930
Oil on paper mounted on cardboard, signed lower left
42.50 x 102.50 cm
History:
This painting was executed in the 1930s. It was exhibited at the Druet Gallery for a solo exhibition of the artist, then at the Musée de la France d'Outre-Mer in 1955. It was then kept in the painter's studio before being sold to the father of the current owner.
Provenance :
Paul Jouve's Collection
Purchased from the artist by the current owner's father
Bibliography:
Félix Marcilhac, Paul Jouve peintre sculpteur animalier, Les éditions de l’Amateur, 2005, illustrated on p. 210.
Exhibition history:
Exposition Paul Jouve (œuvres anciennes et récentes), Galerie Druet, 20 rue Royale, Paris, 5 -16 December 1938, n°22.
Exposition Paul Jouve, Musée de la France d’outre-mer, Paris, 16 April - 8 May 1955, n°26.
Among the countless feline depictions by Paul Jouve, tigers hold a central place. In this Couple of Tigers at Rest, painted around 1930, the artist manages to reconcile wild majesty with familiar intimacy: one tiger, immobile and frontal, asserts the quiet power of its gaze, while the other, reclining, gently rests a paw on its companion.
The elongated and perfectly balanced composition highlights the strength of their striped bodies and the nobility of their posture. As always in Jouve’s work, direct observation of the animal underpins anatomical accuracy, yet it is the decorative impulse—the taste for monumentality and stylization—that gives the scene its timeless power.
This painting exemplifies one of the most emblematic themes of Jouve’s bestiary, where the tiger, king of felines, is both a model of study, a subject of fascination, and a defining symbol of his animal art.