Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Paintings

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Biography

Netherlands Academic painter and draftsman
born 8 January 1836 - died 28 June 1912
Born in: Dronrijp (Friesland, Netherlands).
Died in: Wiesbaden (Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany).
Citizen of: Netherlands, England and Belgium

Also known as: Laurens Alma Tadema, Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema, Lawrence Alma- Tadema.

Born in Dronryp, Friesland, to Pieter Tadema, a notary, and his second wife Hinke Brouwer - from an early age Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema showed some artistic ability and the beginnings of his highly methodical and exacting nature as demonstrated in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings to follow. The painter only adopted the now familiar form of his name after moving to London in 1870.

Early Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings depicted the history of the Merovingian dynasty, rulers of Gaul from the 6th to 8th centuries AD. However, having visited the International Exhibition in London in 1862, he became inspired by the Elgin Marbles and Egyptian artefacts in the British Museum, leading him to turn increasingly to Egyptian themes in his work.
In 1863 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema married a French woman, Marie Pauline Gressin de Boisgirard, and they honeymooned in Italy where he encountered the newly-excavated ruins of Pompeii. So fascinated was Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema by the Roman remains with their preponderance of marble that, within a few years, ancient Roman subject matter came to the fore in Lawrence Alma-Tadema work.

However, in the 1860's, tragedy struck: his only son dying of smallpox in 1865 and his wife died in 1869, leaving him to care for his two daughters Anna and Laurence. But fortune in his career followed swiftly and, in that year, two of Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings - A Roman Art Lover and Phyrric Dance - were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. The latter work prompted the famous critic and writer John Ruskin to comment that:
" ... the general effect was exactly like a microscopic view of a small detachment of black-beetles in search of a dead rat."
Fortunately, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema was one of very few adverse criticisms and, so well were Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings received overall that, upon visiting England the same year to see a doctor, and in part due to the possible impending Prussian invasion of France, he moved his home to London in 1870.

Fame and prosperity soon followed and in 1876 Lawrence Alma Tadema became an Associate of the Royal Academy, being elected to a full Royal Academician in 1879. The Grosvenor Gallery staged an exhibition of 287 of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings in 1882 - he had become one of the most famous artists in Britain.

However Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema made it into almost a palace, designing every detail himself - from the weather vane in the form of an artist's palette and the doorway modeled on one from Pompeii, to the rainspouts in the form of lions' heads. The hall was lined with panels painted by fellow artists and the enormous galleried and marble-floored studio was crowned with a polished aluminum dome - the brightness of the light it reflected noticeably affected Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings from then on.

his clients included members of the British Royal family and the Russian Imperial Family - Lawrence Alma-Tadema was in fact a noted Society portraitist. Indeed approximately 60 of 400 plus Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings are commissioned portraits of sitters ranging from the British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour to the Polish pianist and Prime Minister Ligancy Paderewski.

The period 1862-1870 is called his Continental period, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema established himself as a significant contemporary European artist. Main Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings were of classical genre, dedicated to Ancient Egypt: An Egyptian Widow (1872) and Greek and Roman history: A Roman Family (1868), An Audience at Agrippa's (1876). In 1870, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema moved to England, where he was to spend the rest of his life. he became one of the most famous and highly paid artists of his time, acknowledged and rewarded by the fellow artists as well as by the governments of the European countries. In 1879, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was elected as a full member of the Royal Academy of Art and in 1899 was knighted by Queen Victoria. Among most famous Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings are An Apodyterium (1886), Spring (1894), The Coliseum (1896), The Baths of Caracalla (1899), Silver Favourites (1903), The Finding of Moses (1904), A Favourite Custom (1909). AlmaTadema died in 1912.