A chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, graduate of the Academie des Beaux-Arts, and regular exhibitor of at the Paris Salon, Gustave Surand (1860 - 1914) was a highly-trained and critically-acclaimed painter, whose works can be found at the Musée d'Orsay, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Los Angeles Country Museum of Art.
This work, "Tigre de l'Annam" (c. 1895), is a remarkable demonstration of Durand's skills. The tiger — beautifully and realistically rendered — is spread out in a leafy bower. Durand successfully combines the exotic and bright colors of the Orientalist tradition of his training, with the soft, pastel colors in the peacock feathers, which are a direct influence of Japonisme. The resulting work exhibits both a powerful masculinity and a soft feminine quality.
Signed 'GVE, SURAND' (lower left), indistinctly inscribed on remnants of old exhibition labels on the reverse oil on canvas
