In a composition full of colour and movement, the artist portrays the moment before the kill. Delacroix said that he wanted to create a “feast for the eye”, while also conveying man’s complex relationship to nature. During an extended stay in North Africa, Delacroix gained a good understanding of life there. The formal idiom of The Lion Hunt reflects Western conceptions of the region and can be traced to Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari.