Lions

These artworks were modeled after an ancient prototype. The four limestone statues figure approximately 24” high.

Two pairs of stone lions look down from pillars at either end of a long gravel pathway near the greenhouse, one pair made before 1922 in Chicago from originals Robert Allerton owned, the other in Indiana in 1976. John Allerton’s recollection was that the prototype may have been Assyrian, but, he said, “I don’t know how they were acquired. I think they must have been up against a building, a doorway, or at the base of a doorway.”

Symmetrically arranged, the statues effectively demarcate a long expanse of formal garden walkway. They appear to be carved in the round. A closer inspection shows them to be very high reliefs with flattened backs, apparently once used (in their predecessor’s ancient settings) as architectural decorations.

Text from A Guide to Art at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, Robert Allerton Park, and Chicago by Muriel Scheinman. Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission from the University of Illinois Press.