SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA 1836-1912

Pre-Raphaelite painter most famous for his paintings of female characters from mythology.

 

Born at Dronrijp, a Frisian village near Leeuwarden, he was the son of Pieter Tadema, a notary, who died when Lawrence was only four years old. Alma was the name of his godfather. His mother (d. 1863) was his father's second wife, and was left with a large family. It was designed that the boy should follow his father's profession; but he had so great a leaning towards art that he was eventually sent to Antwerp, where in 1852 he entered the academy under Egide Charles Gustave Wappers. Thence he passed to the atelier of Jan August Hendrik Leys.

His first great success was a picture of " The Education of the Children of Clovis" (1861), which was exhibited at Antwerp. In the following year he received his first gold medal at Amsterdam. The "Education of the Children of Clovis" (three young children of Clovis and Clotilde practicing the art of hurling the ax in the presence of their widowed mother, who is training them to avenge the murder of their own parent) was one of a series of Merovingian pictures, of which the finest was the "Fredegonda " of 1878 (exhibited in 1880), where the dejected wife or mistress is watching from behind her curtain window the marriage of Chilperic I with Galeswintha. It is perhaps in this series that we find the painter moved by the deepest feeling and the strongest spirit of romance. One of the most passionate of all is "Fredegonda at the Death-bed of Praetextatus," in which the bishop, stabbed by order of the queen, is cursing her from his dying bed.

 

In 1863 Alma-Tadema married a French lady, and lived at Brussels till 1869, when she died, leaving him a widower with two daughters, Laurence and Anna, both of whom afterwards made reputations the former in literature, the latter in art. In 1869 he sent from Brussels to the Royal Academy two pictures, " Un Amateur romain " and " Une Danse pyrrhique," which were followed by three pictures, including " Un Jongleur," in 1870, when he came to London. By this time, besides his Dutch and Belgian distinctions, he had been awarded medals at the Paris Salon of 1864 and the Exposition Universelle of 1867. In 1871 he married Miss Laura Epps, an English lady of a talented family, who, under her married name, also won a high reputation as an artist. After his arrival in England Alma-Tadema's career was one of continued success. Amongst the most important of his pictures during this period were " The Vintage Festival " (1870), " The Picture Gallery " and " The Sculpture Gallery " (1875), " An Audience at Agrippa's" (1876), " The Seasons" (1877), " Sappho " (1881), " The Way to the Temple " (1883), his diploma work, " Hadrian in Britain" (1884), " The Apodyterium (1886), "The Woman of Amphissa " (1887),. one of his most famous paintings was The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888),( based on an episode from the life of the infamously debauched Roman Emperor Heliogabalus), "An Earthly Paradise" (1891), and " Spring " (1895). Most of his other pictures have been small canvasses of exquisite finish, like the " Gold-fish " of 1900.

 

His realistic depiction of marble led him to be called the 'marbelous painter'. An Audience at Agrippa's shows the emperor approaching to receive gifts from his clients. When an admirer of the painting offered to pay a substantial sum for a painting with a similar theme Alma-Tadema simply turned the emperor around to show him leaving in After the Audience.

 

See also Georg Ebers, " Lorenz Alma-Tadema," Westermann's Monatshefte, November and December 1885, since republished in volume form; Helen Ziramern, " L. Alma-Tadema, his Life and Work," Art Annual, 1886; C. Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists (London, 1899)

 

In 1870 he married an English woman and moved to London.

 

Gallery pictures: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, In the Tepidarium, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Flora, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Coign of Vantage, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Alma-Tadema - A Bath, A Favorite Custom, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Cherries - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Summer Offering, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Favourite Poet, Alma-Tadema The Women of Amphissa, Alma-Tadema A Kiss, Ask me no more - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

 

From 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.