a bronze group of a lioness offering her cubs a peacock by Auguste Cain, together with 2 photographs

The collection of the artist's family;
Léon Pierre Aubey; and thence by descent

Auguste-Nicolas Cain exhibited a plaster model of his Tigresse rapportant un paon à ses petits at the Salon of 1873. A life-size bronze was commissioned by the state and was shown at the Salon in 1876, entitled Famille de Tigres. The bronze was installed at the Jardin des Tuileries, where it remains to this day.

The model was one of the most accomplished works in the oeuvre of this successful animalier. Reductions were extremely popular with Parisians who regarded the life-size tigress as one of the most appealing sculptures in the city. The demand led to a posthumous edition by the Susse Frères foundry. However, this exceptional bronze was cast by Cain in the foundry of his father-in-law, the celebrated animalier, Pierre-Jules Mêne. As the inscription indicates this bronze was the primary version in the reduced dimensions. It was in the collection of the artist's own family before it was present to Léon Pierre Aubey, a close friend of the artist and his son, Georges, who added the personal inscription.

Cain apprenticed with the wood sculptor Alexandre Guionnet, an early exponent of the animalier genre, who sent animal groups to the Salon between 1831 and 1859. He went on to study modelling with François Rude, whilst at the same time spending hours in Paris's Jardin des Plantes where he sketched from the live animals in the zoo.

Cain married Julie Mêne, the only child of Pierre-Jules Mêne, in 1852. The couple had two sons, Eugène-Henri and Georges-Jules-Auguste, who went on to become the curator of the Musée Carnavalet.

RELATED LITERATURE
Lami, vol. 1, pp. 233-38; Payne, no. C86, p. 155