Sir LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, O.M., R.A., R.W.S.
(1836-1912)
 

The Street Altar

1883

watercolour on paper, 34.7 x 17.3 cm

inscribed: L Alma- Tadema Nov LXXXIII opus CCLVI

P.637

Alma-Tadema was born in Holland and trained in Belgium. His success was due to the dealer Ernest Gambart (1814-1902) promoting his Roman paintings, which in 1865 he brought to London. Alma-Tadema settled there in 1870. His historical subjects, if sometimes rather banal, were accurate in every detail and painted with enormous technical skill, his rendering of marble being especially famed. He was a great showman and a major figure in the English art establishment, so much so that his biographer, Vern Swanson, claimed that his name was as familiar to his generation as Picasso is to ours.

EJ

PROVENANCE: James Reid; Andrew T. Reid; Handley-Read Collection; Fine Art Society, lot 2 June 1974; purchased by Gallery with assistance from V&A/M.G.C. Purchase Grant Fund, June 1974.

EXHIBITIONS: Royal Society of Painters in water-colour, London, no.247, 1884; Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art, London, RA, 1972, no.D130, p.77; Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum and Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1997, no.61.

REFERENCES: Academy Sketches, 1884, p.114, illus.; Becker & E. Prettejohn (eds.), Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1996, no.61, p.223.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.