EST:£5.1M SOLD:£7.3M

ONE of the last great Romantics, Eugene Delacroix was fascinated by tigers and would study them at Paris’s Jardin des Plantes zoo.

This 1862 painting, Tiger Playing with a Tortoise, is a famous example of his work, demonstrating an agitated brushwork and a vividness of colour that is a classic hallmark of the painter.

It is said to mark the beginning of modernity.

Rockefeller said of his 1966 acquisition: ‘It makes one recognise what an outstanding painter Delacroix was.’

The painting was given a wall to itself on the third floor of the couple’s Upper East Side townhouse.