100 œuvres racontent le climat avec le musée d'Orsay : La Chasse au tigre

The Crozatier Museum presents "The Tiger Hunt," a major work by Eugène Delacroix held at the Musée d'Orsay, which falls within a key period of the painter's work, marked by his attraction to nature as a subject of study. Painted in 1854, this painting demonstrates Delacroix's interest in wild animal hunts and his taste for Orientalism.

Today, this work resonates with contemporary concerns about human hunting of animal species considered harmful and dangerous. This theme will be explored in the museum's science gallery, dedicated to environmental change. Through fossils, minerals, herbariums, and stuffed animals, this space recounts the changes in climate, fauna, and flora over the past three million years in the Puy-en-Velay region. This exhibition, which blends art and science, is part of the Crozatier Museum's encyclopedism, where works of art interact with scientific objects and naturalia.

The work will be exhibited in the space dedicated to zoology, in connection with the specimens naturalized in the 19th century, whose species were the subject of extermination campaigns.

Among the major pieces, the public will be able to discover vipers, with the presentation of the snakeskin costume of the vipericide Courtol, a unicum preserved at the Crozatier Museum, a stuffed lynx, a specimen reputed to be the last lynx killed in Haute-Loire in 1822, as well as a stuffed fox, whose image as a pest and vector of disease justified its large-scale hunting. The pangolin, recently acquired by the museum, is also mentioned, due to the implication of this animal at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as responsible for the transmission of the virus to humans. Other animal species are also mentioned, such as the tiger, of course, but also the common raven, the wolf, the bear, and the lion.