The King of Beasts in Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park
Music Concourse

This lion sits outside of the new DeYoung Museum near the Pool of Enchantment.  It is by Roland Hinton Perry. Created in 1898 it was given to the City of San Francisco in 1906 by San Francisco jeweler Shreve and Company.  The sculpture survived a fire in Shreve’s showroom caused by the ’06 earthquake.

The red stone the sculpture sits on was donated by John D. McGilvray. John D. McGilvray Jr. and Sr. worked in the stone and masonry contracting business in San Francisco, Los Angeles,  and Palo Alto, California. ( McGilvray-Raymond Granite Company) Together they helped build many of San Francisco’s best known buildings including the City Hall, the Civic Auditorium, the Public Library, the State Building, the St. Francis Hotel, the Emporium, the Flood Building, the Stanford University Chapel and the original buildings on the Stanford campus.

Roland Hinton Perry was born in New York City to George and Ione Hinton Perry January 25, 1870. He entered the École des Beaux Arts in 1890 at the age of 19. At 21, he studied at the Académie Julian and Académie Delécluse in Paris and focused on sculpture, the medium in which he would achieve the most artistic success.

After returning to the United States, Perry received a commission to sculpt a series of bas-reliefs for the Library of Congress inWashington, D.C. in 1894. The following year, he was commissioned to create the Court of Neptune Fountain in front of the Library’s main building, now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building.  He died October 28, 1941.