The King Drinks

Briton Rivière began his career depicting grand scenes from Shakespearean plays and infamous battles. In his fifties, he turned to animal-subjects and never really looked back. He said: “I have always been a great lover of dogs but I have worked at them so much that I've grown tired of having them about me. However, you can never paint a dog unless you are fond of it. I never work from a dog without the assistance of a man who is well acquainted with animals ... The only way to paint wild animals is to gradually accumulate a large number of studies and a great knowledge of the animal itself, before you can paint its picture ... I paint from dead animals as well as from live ones. I have had the body of a fine lioness in my studio ... I have done a great deal of work in the dissecting rooms at the Zoological Gardens from time to time."