Fight between a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908

The print

Print Quality: Gallery-standard archival pigment giclée, made to order
Media: 308gsm 100% cotton Hahnemühle Photo Rag
Texture & Tone: Super-matte, smooth chalky finish with soft, muted blacks
Longevity: Museum-grade, generational permanence

Photo Rag suits this painting especially well. Its matte cotton surface holds the bold, sharply outlined leaves and deep jungle greens without shine, so the drama of the original comes through on the wall.

Sizes available:

30×30cm, 12×12″, fine art print, open edition
40×40cm, 16×16″, fine art print, open edition
70×70cm, 28×28″, fine art print, open edition

Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.

The story

It is one of Rousseau’s largest and most important paintings, almost two metres wide. A tiger has a buffalo by the neck and pins its muzzle to the ground, while the buffalo’s one visible eye stares straight out at us.

Around them, hothouse plants are blown up to a fearsome scale, and the bananas hang the wrong way up. Botanical accuracy was never the point. Rousseau never left France; his jungles came from travel books and the Paris botanical garden.

He was sixty-three when he was imprisoned, and the painting went on show at the Salon des Indépendants in March 1908, a few months after his release.

It is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, a gift of the Hanna Fund in 1949.