Lithograph printed in black on medium thin bluegrey paper
Sheet: 632x637 mm Image: 490x500 mm
Signed in pencil lower right: Edv Munch
Annotated in pencil lower left: "No 1. 13/12 1916 Nielsen".
1916
Woll 598.
Estimate
NOK 100,000–150,000
LITERATURE: Gerd Woll: Edvard Munch ??? The complete graphic Works, Oslo 2012, cat.no. 598 D.
Munch has made lithographs of the tiger- and lion tamer Sawade both with a tiger and a lion. See Woll cat.nos. 597, 598. In both cases the artist also had impressions made from the same stones where either the animal or the tamer were masked out, and in this case it was made a borderline around the lion???s head only. Sawade probably performed, as Woll says, at the Hagenbeck circus during their stay in Oslo. Woll at cat.no. 597, p. 380.
From 1908-09 the first lithographs of lions emerge in Munch???s oeuvre, and right up to 1920 he has drawn this wild animal, which shows its mighty force and strength. See also Woll cat.nos. 325, 451, 525, 526, 569, 577, 589, 593, 594 and 656. The last lithograph was made after a visit to the Zoological Garden in Berlin in 1920, the first time Munch travelled to the city after the war was over. Woll at cat.no. 656, p. 409.
