112 | Country Life | June 26, 2024 Country Life International D ECORATIVE rather than pro- found, Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) gloried in the visual. Working on The Roses of Helio- gabalus (1888) during the dark months of a London winter, he had roses sent from the French Riviera thrice weekly to serve as inspiration for what is one of his most ravish- ing paintings. For long afterwards, the floor of his London studio was littered with petals. Although ‘Alma-Tad’, as he was affection- ately known by peers, had become embedded within the British artistic establishment, he was of Dutch origin, born in Friesland in 1836. Educated in Leeuwarden, he began studying at the prestigious Royal Academy of Art in Ant- werp in 1852. At this time, he came under the influence of Henri Leys, whose history paint- ings put a firm emphasis on the precise ren- dering of detail. An example came when Leys asked Alma-Tadema to assist him by insert- ing a Gothic table in his painting The Three Reformers with Luther . Leys was not impressed with the result, telling his protégé: ‘That is not my idea of a table. I want one everybody knocks their knees on.’ It was a stricture Alma- Tadema adhered to for the rest of his career. His early history paintings focused on Egypt- ian antiquity and the early-medieval Frankish period, but, by the mid 1860s, he was turning to Greco-Roman subjects, much animated by a trip to Pompeii in 1863. (In an interview for The Strand in 1899, shortly after he’d been knighted, he admitted he’d never visited Greece or the Orient.) A photograph in the artist’s collection showing a crouching figure in a dark hat, assumed to be Alma-Tadema himself, taking measurements of the interior A coign of vantage Famed for his languorous and sultry depictions of ancient Mediterranean opulence, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a master of painting antiquity’s idle rich at leisure, finds Jack Watkins wall of the House of Sallust, reflects the whole- hearted approach he took to the accurate rendering of background detail. He studied the latest archaeological finds and was a frequent visitor to the British Museum. Rather than being interested in ‘great events’ in history, he pre- ferred to show incidental moments or everyday encounters in domestic or social settings. In this sense, his work remained true to the old Dutch tradition, albeit tinged with exoticism. In 1870, Alma-Tadema had moved to London, partly encouraged by the art dealer Ernest Gambart, who impressed on him the demand for his Greek and Roman studies among English buyers. The switch may also have been inspired by love. His first wife, Pauline, had died in 1869. On a trip to London later that year, he had attended a party given by British artist Ford Madox Brown at which he met 17-year- old Laura Epps. It was love at first sight and, by 1871, they had married. It’s been remarked how many female figures in Alma-Tadema’s pictures resembled Lady Alma-Tadema. Although the bulk of his paintings would favour Roman subjects, Alma-Tadema also produced a number of Greek paintings. The first major one had been Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends (1868). There was much debate at this time about whether the ancient Greeks painted their statues. Recent finds in Greek Asia Minor, as well as at Pompeii and Herculaneum, had revealed paint traces on buildings and sculptures. Thus, Alma-Tadema’s Phidias had the sculptor displaying the frieze in all its polychromatic glory to leading person- ages of Athens. This would have been a shock to prospective mid-19th-century viewers, accustomed to associating the Greeks with pure white stone. However, because its buyer refused to allow it to be displayed at the Royal Academy as the artist had hoped, Phidias was not publicly seen until 1877. Phidias notwithstanding, as the years passed Alma-Tadema’s work lightened in tone, with prodigious displays of pure white marble. Outstanding was Sappho and Alcaeus (1881), which featured the 6th-century poet Alcaeus on the island of Lesbos, holding his fellow poet transfixed with a musical recital. The marble terrace is set against a blissfully calm backdrop of trees and the sea. In his 1905 biography, Alma-Tadema’s friend Percy Cross Standing recounted a child exclaiming, ‘I feel when I look at that picture I should like to wear clothes like that—I am so hot in these,’ when the work was shown at the Royal Academy. As Standing wrote, ‘Sappho makes for the An Old Master reclaimed After Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s death in 1912, his work fell from fashion and detractors accused him of simply painting ‘Victorians in togas’. By 1954, an article in The Listener had to explain to readers that ‘Alma-Tadema’ was not a woman. At an auction in 1960, the top bid for The Roses of Heliogabalus was only £105. Attitudes would change once more and, by the 1970s, his sumptuous, brilliantly lit scenes were finding new admirers. Most recently, in 2017, the ‘At Home In Antiquity’ exhibition originated at the Fries Museum in his native Leeuwarden, before embark- ing on an international tour that took in the Leighton House Museum in London. Hailing the asceticism and classical clarity of Alma-Tadema, as well as his influence on a young Gustav Klimt, it seemed the Old Master had come home. Getty; Alamy Dazzling: Lawrence Alma-Tadema ( above ) and his 1895 Coign of Vantage ( facing page ) By the 1890s, a marble terrace and dreamy azure sky had become his stock in trade 114 | Country Life | June 26, 2024 Country Life International glory of cool-looking, cool-tinted robes, worn by the side of “quiet sands and seas.”’ Similar in treatment was A Reading from Homer (1885), although here the audience reclines languidly as the laurel-wreathed poet declaims. The sea is as still as a millpond. By the 1890s, a marble terrace, classical columns, a glistening Mediterranean ocean and a dreamy azure sky had become Alma- Tadema’s stock in trade. Expectations (1885), God Speed! (1893) and Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather (1901) were fine examples. Courtship paintings were especially popular with exhibition audiences. In A Difference of Opinion (1896), a couple argued in front of a classical screen entwined with pink blossom, full of the freshness and fragility of youthful romance. Ask Me No More (1906) had originated as a watercolour 20 years earlier. The artist also liked to place young women against calm seascapes, sometimes confiding ( Whispering Noon , 1896), sometimes in appa- rent disagreement ( Unwelcome Confidence , 1895). In her biography of the artist, the late Rosemary Barrow suggested the three women looking over the parapet in Coign of Vantage (1895) were ‘fashionable and rich aristocrats on holiday... pleasure loving girls in search of the frivolous enjoyments of the Bay’. This was the Bay of Naples, but, for the viewer, this especially dazzling contrast between pristine white marble and the deep blue of the Med could be any southern European coastal resort. Alma-Tadema’s appeal seems to have lain in the way the English middle-classes of his era felt able to imagine themselves in his compositions and, during his lifetime, he admitted to accusations that his Greeks and Romans were ‘too English in their appearance’. Unlike fellow Academicians and friends such as G. F. Watts and Frederic Leighton, he was not an intellectual painter who addressed the ancient Greece of the philosophers or the Rome of the emperors—hedonistic pleasures were more his line. He was a supreme techni- cian, with a spatial awareness that inspired early film makers of historical epics such as Cecil B. DeMille. His work lived up to his favourite motto, carved over the door of his second grand studio house, in Grove End Road, NW6 (to where he and his wife had moved in the mid 1880s), in gold letters: ‘As the sun colours flowers, so art colours life.’ Where to buy Finikas, Syros, €3.9 million (about £3.3m) A seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom beachfront villa with terraces, a large pool and beautiful Mediterranean gardens with palm trees. The property enjoys vistas across the marina and to the Aegean Sea beyond. Savills (020–7016 3740; savills.com) Kontokali, Corfu, €3.2 million (about £2.7m) A two-bedroom, two-bathroom neo-Classical villa overlooking the Ionian Sea. The property enjoys an independent two-bedroom guest apartment, a gym, infinity pool and a little over 1½ acres of landscaped gardens filled with mature olive and fruit trees. 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