Georges-Frédéric Rötig (French, 1873–1961)
Lions on the Prowl (Lions Watching Antelopes)
Oil on canvas, 37 3/4 x 51 1/4 in.
Signed lower right: G F Rötig
DM836

Rötig frequently depicted lions and tigers stalking their prey or making the kill. In reviewing such works, the critic René Édouard-Joseph noted that the artist knew “how to make us witness the dramas of nature” and added that no other painter could so adroitly “express the anxiety of deer in the woods…the sovereign look of lions at the kill, or the rush of their prey.” Rötig exhibited this work, or a similar version, at the Salon in 1920 under the name Lions on the Prowl (Lions à l’âffut), and he showed a related composition of lions again at the Salon in 1926. Scenes of big cats tracking their prey are common in Rötig’s oeuvre, and many examples can be found, including several paintings in the Dahesh collection.