As with his fellow artist and friend Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863), lions and tigers figured prominently in Antoine-Louis Barye's sculptures and watercolors. For a commemorative plaque on the column in the Place de la Bastille, Barye had depicted a striding lion in high relief. This probably led him to the "Walking Lion" (49.42) and its pendant "Walking Tiger," both modeled ca. 1841. Bayre’s sculptural depictions of animals in motion came out of studies he made of animals brought to the menagerie at Paris’s Jardin des Plantes through scientific expeditions abroad.