[1] The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1831, and archives of Delacroix's will executor, Achille Piron, revealed that the painter had paid 1,200 francs to insure it.

[3] And although it seems that the painting inspiration is due to one of his visits to the Jardin des Plantes zoo to see the tigers play with his friend Antoine-Louis Barye (an animal sculptor), Delacroix was always more content to observe his own cat.

These paintings, along with A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, can be interpreted as a form of the artist displaying human emotions and passions personified as tame and fierce animals.

[5] His friend Théophile Gautier saw a resemblance between his manner and those of these great cats that he painted, writing: "His tawny eyes, with their feline expression, his slender lips stretched tight over magnificent teeth, his firm jaw line emphasised by strong cheekbones... gave his features an untamed, a strange, exotic, almost alarming beauty.

His painting of the mother and son tigers is a significant piece in his catalogue and for the time, as Lee Johnson explained: "A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, Delacroix's largest animal painting to date, is shown at an exhibition in the Palais du Luxembourg for the benefit of citizens wounded in the July Revolution.