The Lion Fighter
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia PA
2016


Cast locally by the Bureau Brothers in 1892 for exhibition at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago

Originally installed on a “jutting rock” on East River Drive (now Kelly Drive)

The original Lion Fighter sits as a companion piece to August Kiss’s Mounted Amazon Attacked by a Panther on the steps of the Altes Museum in Berlin. The Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) purchased the original plaster cast for The Lion Fighter in 1889 and placed it in Memorial Hall for public viewing, along with a plaster version of the Amazon. This bronze was cast locally by the Bureau Brothers in 1892 for exhibition at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. When returned to Philadelphia, it was installed on a “jutting rock” on East River Drive. It was moved to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1929, where – as in Berlin – it accompanies a bronze cast of the Amazon.