The Lion in Love (painting)

The Lion in Love is an 1836 oil on canvas painting in the Academic-Romantic style by Camille Roqueplan (1800–1855) now in the Wallace Collection in London.[1]

Camille Roqueplan: The Lion in Love, o. J.; Preparatory drawing in chalk. Musée national Magnin, Dijon

Camille Roqueplan: The Lion in Love (1836). Oil on canvas, 195,5 × 153 cm. Wallace Collection, London

It shows a scene of a lion allowing its claws to be pared after falling in love with a shepherdess so that he will not endanger her, told in Jean de La Fontaine's fable Le Lion amoureux ,[2] though the painter adds an erotic undercurrent reminiscent of Delilah cutting Samson's hair as well as a Romantic spin on Beauty and the Beast by making the woman the one to pare the claws, thus portraying female beauty as life-threatening, maddening and ultimately fatal.[3] It also forms part of a contemporary fashion for the femme fatale in literature, art and opera.[4]

It was first exhibited at the 1836 Paris Salon under the title Le Lion amoureux,[5] before being acquired by Louis-Philippe of France's son and heir Ferdinand Philippe.[6] His widow Helene then sold it on 18 January 1853 in Paris to Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, whose illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace inherited it with the rest of the Marquess' art collection.[7]