Lion Tamer – Vintage Wall Art
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Lion Tamer comes to life in this historic image, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.
Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. It brings character to any room and makes a memorable gift. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Lion Tamer
Order a print
Thank you. Your order went through, and a receipt is on its way by email.
Secure checkout · SSL encryptedPowered by Stripe and PayPal
Free shipping in the lower 48 states. The checkout page shows the picture, size and price before you pay.
Most pictures of circus performers from this period show the ring or the crowd, but this one puts the trainer inside a cage with a mixed group of animals: two lions, a lioness, and two tigers. Mixing big cats in a single act was a showman's gamble, since lions and tigers do not reliably tolerate one another, so the image captures a moment of staged danger that audiences of the 1870s paid to see. The photograph was made in 1873 by Gibson & Co. of Cincinnati, a city with a busy trade in traveling menageries and popular photographic portraits. Because exposures of that era required the subject to hold still, the animals and trainer appear posed, which tells us as much about the careful staging of the act as about the animals themselves.
| Created / published | 1873 |
|---|---|
| Creator | Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio) |
| Subjects | Lion tamer in cage with two lions, a lioness, and two tigers. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,285 × 974 px · prints to 4 × 3 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | 3 |
More from the Circus & Carnival collection
Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.
![[Parade with lion in cage on wagon, circus tent in background]](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/f0/f0566d0c1c72-400.webp)
![[Parade with lion in cage on wagon, circus tent in background]](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/61/6115541429f1-400.webp)
![Calliope! The wonderful Operonicon or Steam Car of the Muses, as it appears in the gorgeous street pagent [sic] of the Great European Zoological Association! ...](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/de/de1d37eb3f23-400.webp)
