Bagheera Fountain by Lillian Saarinen

Originally entitled Night, this piece’s current title is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. One of the story’s characters, the panther Bagheera, is born into captivity but escapes. He later helps to save the life of the main character Mowgli, a human child living in the jungle. Boston-area artist Lillian Swann Saarinen shows Bagheera lunging at an eagle. In a 1980 interview, Saarinen recalled that her interest in animals went back to her early childhood, when she used to stay up late at night sketching the mice that crept around her family’s brownstone. The artist was married to architect Eero Saarinen and worked with him on The Gateway to the West, the famous arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

Photo 81, July 2012

Bagheera Fountain by Lillian Saarinen

Photo 82, July 2012

Bagheera Fountain by Lillian Saarinen

Photo 82, July 2012