Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Lourens Alma Tadema (Dronryp, 8 January 1836 - Wiesbaden, 25 June 1912), known in England as Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was a Dutch painter who settled in London in 1870 and later became a British subject. He was one of the most popular painters of the Victorian era. He is remembered above all for his scenes of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity, with elegant figures, marble interiors and dazzling Mediterranean skies. His importance lies in the care with which he reconstructed the ancient world and in the influence he had on later painters and on the cinema.

Childhood and training in Antwerp

He was born in Dronryp, a village in Friesland, the son of a notary who died when Lourens was only four. His family expected him to study law, but after a serious physical and mental breakdown as a teenager he spent his time drawing and painting and decided to become an artist. In 1852 he entered the Royal Academy of Antwerp, where he studied early Dutch and Flemish art under Gustaf Wappers. Before leaving the academy he worked as assistant to the professor Louis de Taeye, whose courses in history and historical costume had impressed him. De Taeye passed on his interest in ancient civilisations and encouraged historical accuracy, a trait for which Alma-Tadema later became known. He then moved to the studio of Jan August Hendrik Leys, one of the most respected in Belgium, and helped him with the wall paintings of the Antwerp city hall.

First successes and the Merovingian series

His first major success was The Education of the Children of Clovis (1861), shown in Antwerp. Leys criticised his treatment of marble, which he compared to cheese, and this remark pushed Alma-Tadema to improve his technique with stone and reflective materials, which became one of his signatures. In the years that followed he worked on Merovingian subjects, his favourites up to the mid-1860s. Within that series, Fredegonda (1878) shows a woman watching a wedding from behind a curtain, a scene with a more romantic tone than much of his output. Merovingian themes had little international appeal, however, and Alma-Tadema, who had been working independently since 1862, turned to subjects with a wider market.

Egypt, Greece and Rome

In September 1863 he married Marie-Pauline Gressin-Dumoulin de Boisgirard in Antwerp, and their honeymoon in Florence, Rome, Naples and Pompeii proved decisive. In Pompeii he met the Italian painter Geremia Discanno, who was copying the frescoes uncovered in the excavations, and he consulted him several times to make his scenes of ancient daily life accurate. From then on his work focused almost entirely on antiquity. He produced an Egyptian series, with works such as Egyptians 3,000 Years Ago (1863) and The Death of the Pharaoh's Firstborn Son (1872), and a Greco-Roman one, including Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to His Friends (1868) and Escena pompeyana (1868). In 1864 the dealer Ernest Gambart, the most influential of the period, commissioned twenty-four pictures from him, which gave him financial stability.

Career in England

After the death of his first wife in 1869 and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Alma-Tadema decided to settle in London, where his pictures had already found buyers. In 1871 he married Laura Epps, who was seventeen when he met her and who appears in several of his canvases, such as The Women of Amphissa (1887). In 1873 Queen Victoria granted him and his wife the status of British denizens, and in 1879 he became a member of the Royal Academy. His success reached a peak: a major retrospective was held at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882, and he was knighted in 1899. The most famous work of this period is The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), based on the debauched Roman emperor, for which the flowers were sent to his London studio from the French Riviera over several months. Other key works include An Earthly Paradise (1891), Spring (1894) and Preparation in the Coliseum (1912), his last major composition. He also painted portraits, watercolours and made some etchings.

Style and technique

His paintings are remarkable for the precise depiction of flowers, textures and reflective materials such as metal, pottery and, above all, marble. Alma-Tadema relied on books, on objects from museums such as the British Museum, and on a large archive of photographs of Italian sites to achieve an unusual archaeological exactness. He was a perfectionist who reworked his pictures until he was satisfied, and he was very careful in the preparation of his sketches. His bright colours, handled with delicacy, contrast with scenes that often have a playful or sensual tone, with men and women on marble terraces overlooking the sea. His rigour was admired, though some critics accused him of pedantry. He drew on the old Dutch masters for his craft and for his handling of light.

Legacy and rediscovery

After his death in Wiesbaden he was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London. His reputation fell sharply with the rise of twentieth-century modernism, and for decades critics dismissed him. Since the 1960s, however, his work has been reassessed as an important part of Victorian painting and of nineteenth-century classical-subject painting. His influence can be seen in painters such as Gustav Klimt and Fernand Khnopff, who used classical motifs and similar compositional devices. His reconstructions of Rome also served as models for film directors, and his work remains a key reference for the interest in everyday life in the ancient world.