At A Glance
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.
Adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992).
Voices heard in the Museum Without Walls: AUDIO program: Ann Kuttner is professor of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art at the University of Pennsylvania. Judith Schaechter is a Philadelphia-based artist who works primarily in the museum of stained glass. Thayer Tolles is Associate Curator of American Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. | Segment Producer: Ben Shapiro
Museum Without Walls: AUDIO is the Association for Public Art’s award-winning audio program for Philadelphia’s outdoor sculpture. Available for free by phone, mobile app, or online, the program features more than 150 voices from all walks of life – artists, educators, civic leaders, historians, and those with personal connections to the artworks.
RESOURCES:
This artwork is part of the Along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway tour, and the Around the Philadelphia Museum of Art tour.
