Central Park In Bronze

Location: 63rd Street, east side

Artist/Designer: Auguste Cain

Materials: Bronze, Deer Isle granite

Installation: 1867

Funding: Unknown citizens, possibly including Samuel F. B. Morse

 

The only tigers in the Central Park Zoo are this bronze tigress and her two cubs. Auguste Nicholas Cain depicted the animals in a realistic, natural scene: the mother feeding a peacock to her young. Like the initial response to the Eagles and Prey statue by another Frenchman, Christophe Fratin, Cain’s work was acclaimed for its artistic merit but criticized as being too violent for the pastoral Park.

 

One of the earliest statues in the Park, Tigress and Cubs was first installed on a rock outcrop in the Ramble near the Lake. It was moved to the Central Park Zoo in 1934. When the Zoo was renovated in 1988, the statue was relocated to its present site, between the Intelligence Garden and the Tropical Zone. It’s the only statue in the Park you need to pay to see.

Tigress and Cubs