Lion Paintings

Thepainting on the left is an oil and canvas by William John Huggins(1781-1845) named "A lion". The painting on the right is also an oil on canvas by Jason Morgan named "African Lion". I appreciate both these paintings because I have much respect for the lion (it is my middle name). I personally like the lion on the right slightly more because I think the one on the right shows a lion more in its natural unagitated stage. But then I thought about the age diference between these two paintings and you have to realize the world was a different place 200 years ago, so the view of lions from a European standpoint would have been drastically different. People in Europe had no idea, no picture of what an African lion looked like so Huggins wanted to let the world know through his painting. The only thing is that he was trying really hard to depict the lion as an extremely violent animal and giving a monster-like effect to it. The one on the right is modern and shows the lion in its calm everday state because a lion is not always roaring and belligerent, infact they are very lazy animals who sleep 20 hours a day. Of course if you mess with a lion he will tear any human to shreds, but I personally believe it would have been unlikely for a European painter back then to paint the lion in a similar way as the one on the right. I think the painting on the right has the physique of the lion down to every detail, and the one on the left does not, but that is not Huggins fault beacuse viewers of this piece and European painters were not knowledge about the anatomy of the lion, but rather intrigued and fascinated by the fierce and courageous nature of the lion.