Artwork Details
- Title
- The Lion Fighter
- Artist
- Albert Wolff (1814 – 1892)
- Year
- 1858; cast 1892; relocated 1929
- Medium
- Bronze, on limestone base
- Dimensions
- Height 14′, width 14'1", depth 8'4" (base height 17′, width 13'9 1/2", depth 10'2 1/2")
Artwork Description
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 Association for Public Art (then known as Fairmount Park Art Association) 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, The Lion Fighter was installed on a “jutting rock” on East River Drive. As described in the Association’s 50th anniversary book: “The natural rock, instead of a pedestal, proved an innovation; it gives to the work a fitness and grandeur that could be obtained in no other way.” In 1929, the sculpture was moved to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where—as in Berlin—it accompanies a bronze cast of the Amazon.
Content on this page was adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, 1992). Bach was the longtime Executive Director of the Association for Public Art, working with the organization from 1980 to 2022.
Artwork Credits
Purchased by Association for Public Art (formerly Fairmount Park Art Association)
Owned by the City of Philadelphia
Artwork Media
Museum Without Walls
Voices:
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 medium of stained glass.
THAYER TOLLES is Associate Curator of American Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Segment Producer: Ben Shapiro