[Frontispiece: AN EARTHLY PARADISE. ("ALL THE HEAVENS OF HEAVEN IN
ONE LITTLE CHILD.")]
Bell's Miniature Series of Painters
SIR LAWRENCE
ALMA TADEMA
R. A.
BY
HELEN ZIMMERN
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1902
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Life of the Artist
The Work of Alma Tadema
The Art of Alma Tadema
Our Illustrations
List of the Principal Pictures by Alma Tadema, with Owners' Names
List of the Principal Portraits painted by Alma Tadema
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
An Earthly Paradise. ("All the Heavens of Heaven in one little
child") _Frontispiece_
A Reading from Homer
At the Shrine of Venus
"Ave Caesar! Iò Saturnalia!"
Spring
An Audience at Agrippa's
Sappho
The Coliseum
All the illustrations are reproduced by special permission
of the Berlin Photographic Company.
LIFE OF
SIR LAWRENCE ALMA TADEMA
Laurens Alma Tadema was born on January 8th, 1836, at Dronryp, a
little town in the very heart of the Frisian province of Holland.
Hence by birth Tadema is Dutch, though by residence and
naturalization he is now an Englishman. His Dutch birth, as we shall
see later, was not without significant effect upon the development
and character of his art. The father, Pieter Tadema, was an
intelligent lawyer with a pronounced taste for music. Unfortunately,
while the young Laurens was still a baby, this parent died, and his
education and upbringing were left entirely in the hands of the
mother. A woman of unusual capacity, she found herself at an early
age with four children upon her hands--two, a girl and our painter,
being her own offspring, and two her husband's by a previous
marriage. The means at her disposal were small; but undaunted, she
put herself to fight single-handed the battle of life, and with such
success, that by her unassisted efforts she was able to place all her
children well. Laurens, her youngest, was also something of her
darling, and even as a child he realized all his mother was doing on
her children's behalf. To her early example no doubt are due his
great powers of perseverance, his undaunted application, his
high-minded sense of duty.
From the very first his favourite plaything was a pencil and paper;
he drew as by instinct. A family tradition survives to the effect
that before he was five years old, Laurens had corrected an error in
a drawing-master's design. Nature herself, therefore, seems to have
pointed out his future career. But so the mother and guardians did
not think. Art was regarded in those days as a profession which
savoured of a discreditable character, and certainly not as one that
could be rendered lucrative. It was therefore resolved that Laurens
should follow in his father's footsteps.
This choice he found irksome to the last degree, and irksome, too,
were the preliminary steps. For the dead languages he had no taste,
for all dry-bone studies he had little use. His spare hours, and
often his lesson hours too, were spent in drawing, and many a time he
would have himself awakened before daybreak in order that he might
devote the hours before school time to working at his favourite
pastime. He had no masters and little encouragement, nevertheless he
plodded on, and with such good results that already, in 1851, he was
able to exhibit in a Dutch gallery a portrait he had painted of his
sister, a work that even in its immaturity betrays some of the
qualities that distinguish his later and greater efforts in this
department.
But the dual effort imposed on this young soul by the fight between
duty and inclination was too heavy a physical burden for the juvenile
shoulders to bear. A collapse of health occurred just as Laurens was
growing up, and so serious did it seem that the doctors told the
mother and guardians how, seeing the young man was not long for this
world, it seemed needless to mar his few remaining months of
existence by forcing him to continue his hated legal studies. For
this short period at least he might be allowed to be happy following
his bent. But what was the surprise of doctors and guardians when
Laurens, as soon as the heavy strain was removed, recovered as though
by magic, and rapidly became the sturdy, robust man he has remained
all his life.
It was now at last evident to those in authority that Tadema was a
genius whose advance must not be thwarted or coerced; art, therefore,
was reluctantly acknowledged to be his proper profession, and to
prepare himself for this he sought admission to an art academy.
Strange, nay almost incredible though it sounds, he could gain no
admission to those of his native land. Antwerp, at that time a noted
artistic centre, proved more discerning and less inhospitable. It
chanced that Tadema entered at a moment when the rival claims of
French pseudo-classicism and Belgian naturalism were dividing the
Academy into factions.
The one, the Pseudo-classic, was headed by Louis David, who at that
time was living in Antwerp in exile. The other, called the
Belgian-Flemish School, aimed at reviving the ancient local art of
the Low Countries. Alma Tadema was not made of the stuff to become a
pseudo-classic or a pseudo anything. It was, therefore, quite
natural that the young student ranged himself at once with those who
sought to revive the best traditions of the Dutch and Flemish
schools. This native section was led by Wappers, and Tadema soon
became one of his most enthusiastic partisans.
A friend who knew him in those days has said, "Tadema did not work at
Antwerp, he slaved in his efforts to make up for all the precious
time that had been lost." Of his early efforts, however, none have
survived. Tadema has no severer critic than Tadema himself, and to
this day he will not allow a picture to leave his studio until he has
made it as perfect as he knows how, so that he mercilessly destroyed
all his tentative canvases that could not yet reproduce the perfected
ideals of the master. Even in those early days the subjects belonged
either to history proper or that ancient history which is half
enveloped in myth.
It was about this time that Tadema added the prefix Alma to the
paternal surname. Alma was the name of his godfather, and such a
proceeding was, it seems, not unusual in Holland. Tadema's reason
for taking this step was that in this wise his name in artistic
catalogues was ranged among the A's instead of further down among the
T's. Undoubtedly such apparent trifles do prove of consequence in
helping or hindering a career.
From the Academy of Antwerp Alma Tadema passed into the studio of
Hendrick van Leys, the great Belgian archæologist and historical
painter; his teaching, coming at the moment it did, proved of great
value to Alma Tadema. Van Leys was just then busy decorating the
Grand Town Hall of Antwerp with frescoes. In this work Alma Tadema
was allowed to assist the master, and while so doing the young artist
gained knowledge that proved of immense importance to his own after
career. To van Leys' influence he owes his own historical accuracy
and his attention to detail even the most minute. It also helped him
to see objects truthfully and, what is equally important, to see them
in mass. It is true that for a time van Leys' example was somewhat
pernicious, since some of Alma Tadema's works of the period are
visibly influenced by his master's dryness and harshness of
execution. But the young man's own native bias toward rich and full
colour was too strong for any influence long to repress the
remarkable and idiosyncratic capacity that throbbed within him and
was yearning to find full expression.
The subjects treated by van Leys in the Antwerp Guildhall were all
taken from the history of the Low Countries. It was thus that Alma
Tadema became acquainted with their early annals by which his own
first pictures were inspired.
It was the sale of one of these, _The Education of the Children of
Clovis_, bought by the King of the Belgians, that made it possible
for the young artist to call his mother and sister to live with him
in Antwerp. This removal of his family gave Alma Tadema intense joy,
for he is one of those wholesomely constituted beings to whom family
life is an absolute necessity. In order for him to be happy and to
have his mind free to work at his congenial occupation, it is needful
to his nature that outside circumstances be calm, and that his
existence be surrounded by an atmosphere of tenderness and affection.
Four years after joining her son, Madame Tadema died. It is sad to
think that this good parent did not live to witness her son's
world-wide fame, but pleasant to know that she still heard the praise
aroused by some of his first exhibited pictures, and to see him the
recipient of his first gold medal, that accorded to him at Amsterdam
in 1862. In 1865 Tadema married a French lady, and removed to
Brussels, where he remained until his wife's death. This occurred in
1869, when he was left alone with his sister and two little girls,
the eldest, Laurence, who has developed into a gifted writer, and the
second, Anna, the delicate, dainty artist who has inherited so much
of her father's power for reproducing detail.
It was during the lifetime of his first wife that Alma Tadema paid
his first visit to Italy and saw with his own eyes the homes of those
Romans who were destined to become his most familiar friends.
This journey, as might be expected, exerted a strong influence upon
his art, but it did not entirely reverse all his views and methods,
as has been the case with many other artists. The fact is that Alma
Tadema had of set purpose avoided going to Italy before this date.
On this point he had, and has always had, a very pronounced opinion.
According to him the influence of Italy is so potent, so epoch-making
in the life of an artist, that he should never go there until he is
himself mature and has already found his own road. Otherwise all he
sees in that magic land only helps to unsettle him, and hence hinders
rather than helps forward the evolutionary development of the man's
own artistic idiosyncrasy.
And indeed Alma Tadema's opinion would seem right on this point,
though it is in direct opposition to the practice of all the art
schools and academies of the world. It is certainly strange how few
of those who gain travelling scholarships, of those who are Prix de
Rome and are sent to the Villa Medici, become great and original
artists.
Speaking on this theme one day Tadema remarked, "Of what use is it to
try and graft a branch laden with fruit upon a sapling. If the
sapling has no trunk how is it possible to effect a graft? Rubens
followed the right principle, and so after having extracted from
foreign travel the best it could give he still remained Rubens. But
what would have happened if he had undertaken his journey
prematurely, that is to say before the artist inside him was fully
developed?"
On another occasion Alma Tadema expressed his views on the same
subject: "It is my belief that an art student ought not to travel.
When once he has become an artist, conscious of his own aim, of his
own wants, he will certainly profit by seeing the works of the great
masters, because he will then be able to understand them, and can
then, if necessary, appropriate such things as may appear useful to
him. With one or two exceptions the Prix de Rome men are not the
foremost of their day. Meissonier, Gerome, van Leys, remained at
home till they had become consummate artists. Rembrandt never left
Amsterdam, and Rubens, when travelling through Italy, made some
sketches after Lionardo da Vinci which might pass as original Rubens,
because Rubens was already Rubens when he did them. Vandyck and
Velasquez travelled when they were already Vandyck and Velasquez, but
not before."
The great picture dealer in those early days of Alma Tadema's art
life was the Frenchman, M. Gambart, "Prince Gambart," as he used to
be called in playful irony, for it was he who controlled and
regulated the picture market of Europe, to the immense benefit of his
own pocket. It is but fair, however, to add that he was a generous
as well as a discerning dealer. When he was visiting any city in his
commercial capacity, the whisper "Gambart is here!" would run round
all the studios, and many a plot did unknown young artists lay in
order to wile him into their workshops, and keen was the
disappointment if the great man left the city after visiting only the
studios of one or two of the most noted men, ignorant of all the
schemes and plans that had been laid to entrap him.
The young Alma Tadema was among those who plotted to secure a visit
from the great Gambart, and he too was doomed to see his hopes
dashed. At last, however, these hopes were fulfilled. It was thanks
to van Leys, who had purposely given a wrong address to Gambart's
coachman, directed to carry his master to the studio of a painter
then much _en vogue_. Hence it came that the great dealer found
himself in front of Alma Tadema's modest studio instead. In the
doorway stood the young artist palpitating with excitement. Gambart,
who by this time had perceived his error, was too good-natured to
turn back without entering. After he had looked at the work upon the
easel in silence, he suddenly asked in brusque tones, "Do you mean to
tell me you painted this picture?" Alma Tadema bowed his
acquiescence, he was too overcome to speak. "Well," replied the
dealer, after asking the price and a few other details, "turn me out
twenty-four other pictures of this kind and I will pay for them at
progressive prices, raising the figure after each half dozen."
This was indeed an unexpected stroke of good fortune for Alma Tadema,
who at once set to work to fulfil his commission. It was not all
plain sailing however. Gambart wished to pin down the wings of the
artist's fantasy, and it was only after long discussion and
bargaining that he permitted the painter to choose his themes from
among classical subjects instead of remaining among those of the
Middle Ages in which he had first found him engaged.
It was thus that some of the most famous of the artist's earlier
works were included in this series ordered at so much the half dozen,
as if they had been gloves or any article of haberdashery.
It took Alma Tadema four years to carry out Gambart's first
commission. When he was at the finish of his task, Gambart once more
appeared upon the scene.
"I want you to paint me another twenty-four pictures," was the quaint
order given by this dealer--Maecenas again offering to remunerate
Alma Tadema at an ascending rate of payment, only this time the
starting point was a very much higher figure.
Once more the artist consented. The first work of the new series was
the famous _Vintage_. When the dealer saw it he perceived that it
was a far more important canvas than any of its predecessors, a work,
too, that had cost the artist far more time and labour, and he at
once insisted upon paying for it the figure which was to have been
given for the last half dozen. For Gambart, despite his profession
and his bizarre ways, was liberal and generous, and perhaps he
understood too that it paid to be honest.
Alma Tadema is fond of telling the tale how, when he had finished his
second two dozen pictures, Gambart invited him and the whole artistic
colony of Brussels to dinner. To our artist's no small surprise, he
found that it was he who was the guest of honour. In front of his
plate there shone a silver goblet bearing a most flattering
inscription, while into his table-napkin was folded a large cheque, a
sum accorded to him by Gambart beyond the stipulated price.
An accident brought Tadema to London in 1870, and here he at once
took root. A year later he remarried, his wife this time being Miss
Laura Theresa Epps, a woman of rare beauty, and herself a painter of
distinction.
For many years Tadema's home was in Regent's Park Road, a modest
London residence which by his ingenuity he transformed into a fairy
palace. He afterwards moved into larger quarters in Grove End Road,
where he has reared a house entirely upon his own designs that
repeats on a larger and more sumptuous scale the beauties of the
earlier residence.
In Alma Tadema's case the environment does indeed explain the man.
His keen sense of beauty, his classic tastes, his love of flowers,
make themselves felt in every nook and corner of his abode; in the
silver-walled studio with its onyx windows, in its mosaic atrium, in
which a fountain splashes, in Lady Tadema's special room with its
oak-beamed ceiling, its Dutch panelling, its old Dutch furniture, in
its low-windowed library packed with splendid illustrated works on
artistic themes, in its pretty garden ever gay with blossoms, with
its fish pond and trellised colonnade. In almost every room can be
reconstructed the scenes of his pictures; the lustrous marble basin
in the sky-lit atrium bears upon its sloping rim a heap of withered
rose leaves, faintly recording that rich shower of fragrance which
once suggested a striking detail in the Heliogabalus picture. The
burnished brass steps appearing at frequent intervals figure over and
over again in the pictures of Roman villas and classical
environments. Perhaps one of the most striking features of this
house, which is filled with objects of priceless worth, is its
unevenness of pavement. There are such endless nooks and alcoves,
each room is conceived upon a different scale and may be lower or
higher than its immediate neighbour, and yet, most marvellous of all,
the cluster of beautiful apartments perfectly harmonize one with
another. From the oblong entrance hall, over whose fireplace runs
the greeting,
"I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends",
whose wall decorations consist in panels painted for the artist by
his friends, to the low-lying dining-room, looking upon the garden
and shaded by the great tree which it is Tadema's delight to watch in
its leaf unfolding, its full summer verdure and its winter gauntness,
all is beautiful, all is sympathetic, and all is the result of an
ardent appreciation of the artistic possibilities of the most humble
objects of domestic life.
Through all the rooms are scattered portraits of its beautiful women
inmates, here a statue of Lady Alma Tadema, there a window into whose
delicately coloured panes are fashioned the likenesses of the quaint
little girls who have now grown to women, outside under the window of
these same daughters' room is a beautiful bit of sculptured frieze
bearing the interwoven tulips of Holland, lilies of France, and
English roses.
The most frequent guest finds continual surprises in this house whose
every accessory is as carefully conceived as one of the details of
its master's pictures.
Holland, Greece, London and Rome have all contributed their quota to
render this house _sui generis_, and once we have passed the postern
gate that leads from Grove End Road into the garden we instinctively
feel ourselves incorporated into another world, another clime, and
London and its squalor, its fogs and cold, are forgotten for a time.
It is in this congenial _milieu_ that the artist works, a _milieu_
helpful and suggestive to the special character of his art. His life
since his removal to England has been uneventful. The saying, "Happy
those who have no history" might be applied to Tadema. Hard work,
persistent study, unremitting efforts after ever greater perfection
of style and treatment, sum up Alma Tadema's artistic existence.
[Illustration: A READING FROM HOMER.]
He is essentially a sociable man, a lover of his kind. His work is
only interrupted by visits from friends, by weekly afternoon and
evening receptions, so charming that the entrée is greatly coveted,
by the claims upon his time as Professor at the Royal Academy and
member of the Council; demands all of which he fulfils with his
characteristic strenuousness and high sense of duty. In 1876 he
became an Associate Member of the Royal Academy, and in 1879 a Royal
Academician. In 1899 he received the well-merited honour of
knighthood at the hands of Queen Victoria.
It is not often that Alma Tadema leaves the house to which he is
devoted, both for its beauty and because it harbours all whom he
holds dear, for he is essentially a domestic man. Occasional visits
to the English country, which he greatly admires, and rare trips to
Italy, which he naturally loves, are all the holidays he allows
himself, and even during such changes of place he does not permit
himself rest, but is ever studying fresh effects of light and colour,
fresh combinations, imbibing fresh artistic suggestions. Nothing
escapes Tadema's wide-open eyes; he is never too weary to receive a
new impression.
As a man he has about him no trace of the pedantry which might be
anticipated from the archaic character of his work. He is generous,
genial, warm-hearted, a lover of jokes and anecdotes good and bad, a
cheery optimist, a boon companion in the best sense of that term. He
is also the truest and most faithful of friends, and the kindest and
most large-hearted of teachers. His appreciation of the works of
others is wide and sincere, and, no matter how different this work
may be from his own style and taste, he gives to it its due meed of
praise, provided it be executed with honest intent.
London society is familiar with this wiry, strong-set figure, with
this face of kindly comeliness, with the cheery voice, with the
frank, observant eye, the merry quips and pranks, the energy, the
intense love of all that is great, and good, and lovely. To be with
him is to feel invigorated, for he seems to have so much superfluous
vitality that he is able to dispense it to his surroundings.
Of his art he rarely speaks, and still more rarely of his
art-theories. Indeed he is no theorist, though he knows perfectly
well at what ends he aims, and his art, like his personality, is
homogeneous throughout. But it is not in his nature to analyze, he
follows his instincts, and these are true and right. "To thine own
self be true," has been his life motto, and faithfully has he served
it.
THE WORK OF ALMA TADEMA
The first in date of Alma Tadema's preserved paintings is a cycle of
pictures dealing with Merovingian times. To these Merovingians he
was early attracted, partly perhaps because in his old home and
birthplace relics, such as coins, medals, armour belonging to that
epoch were the only antiquities the soil could boast. Added to this,
chance threw into his way Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks and
the quaint old chronicler completely captivated his fancy. From this
treasure-house of fact and fiction he drew a series of pictures
which, if no more historically correct than Gregory himself, were
nevertheless carefully pondered pieces of archæological improvisation
in which the minute studies of accessories made while still in Frisia
stood Alma Tadema in good stead. _Clotilde at the Grave of her
Grandchildren_ was an incident entirely without foundation in fact,
but one of Gregory's stories had suggested the situation, and Tadema
at once realized its dramatic and pictorial possibilities. In
treatment this canvas was still a little hard and dry, the influence
of van Leys' somewhat arid manner was too apparent. The same
criticism applies, but in a less degree, to its successor, the work
that won for Alma Tadema his first success, _The Education of the
Children of Clovis_. This, too, was inspired by the old Prankish
chronicler, and here also, as often in Alma Tadema's art, a good deal
of previous knowledge is requisite in order fully to appreciate the
composition. It cannot be denied that this is one of the
difficulties of truly understanding the painter's work. His subjects
are apt to be at times a little too archæological, a little too
literary for immediate or easy explanation. Their atmosphere is
inclined to be somewhat remote from common knowledge or interest.
Nevertheless in this canvas the tale is sufficiently told, and
already the real Alma Tadema is making himself felt in the greater
richness of the colouring and in the skilful disposition of the
figures. Quite especially free and energetic is the figure of the
eldest boy throwing his axe at the mark, and that of his teacher
looking on intently to see how his charge conducts himself during
this public exposition of his prowess. This work, which is now the
property of the King of the Belgians, was bought by the Antwerp
Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts for the paltry sum of
one thousand six hundred francs, an amount which at the time seemed a
large remuneration to its painter.
This picture was followed by yet others, all inspired by the
Merovingian chronicles that had taken such a firm hold upon the
artist's imagination. In each successive picture the scheme of
colour grew fuller and warmer, the dull manner of the master van Leys
was more and more abandoned, the real Alma Tadema made himself more
and more felt. His own individuality, his own methods of conception
became manifest. This is especially the case in a picture called
_Gonthram Bose_, another of the Merovingian series. We here see Alma
Tadema already applying his peculiar capacity of filling in every
inch of the canvas, thus often giving to the tiniest space a sense of
vastness, of distance, of immensity, that renders his smallest works
such marvellous gems of concentrated beauty. Of course it took time
to learn to do this without arousing a sense of overcrowding, a fault
that occurs even in one or two of his later works, but more and more
as he advanced this danger was eliminated and the capabilities hidden
in this artifice became ever more manifest. The little figures with
which he peopled his pictures also steadily advanced in correctness
of movement and bore about them a local physiognomy that revived an
entire historical epoch in a few square inches of canvas. The whole
Merovingian period seemed incarnated in these works.
This same capacity of resuscitating a remote historical time was yet
more pleasantly revealed when Alma Tadema at last turned from
painting these gorgeous but bloodthirsty barbarians, and applied
himself instead to the mysterious land of Egypt, the source of all
culture and all knowledge, the land he has never seen, but which he
has apprehended so wonderfully with the eye of his brain. The German
Egyptologist and novelist, George Ebers, a friend of Alma Tadema's,
to whom he dedicated one of his historical tales, once asked him what
it was that had turned him from his Franks towards the land of Isis.
Alma Tadema replied, "Where else should I have begun as soon as I
became acquainted with the life of the ancients? The first thing a
child learns of ancient history is about the Court of Pharaoh, and if
we go back to the source of art and science must we not return to
Egypt?"
This migration to the Nile closed what may be termed Alma Tadema's
first artistic period, which embraces the ten years that lie between
1852 and 1862. In 1863 he exhibited his _Egyptians Three Thousand
Years Ago_. Here, though archæological knowledge was manifest,
Tadema did not sacrifice his picture to a pedantic display of
learning. On the contrary, it rather seemed his object to show that
these dead and gone old Egyptians, whom we are too inclined to think
of as the stiff, lifeless figures that greet us from the temples and
stone carvings of their native land, were men and women like to
ourselves. A work such as this exhibited great study, more perhaps
than that demanded by his Merovingians. But from the outset it was
evident that Alma Tadema would not covenant with prevailing fashions
in art in order to buy public favour at a cheap price. He would take
up no task which did not commend itself to his æsthetic faith, to his
individual inclination, to the particular preferences of his taste.
Never, even at the outset of his career, when financial success had
not yet come, did Alma Tadema convert his function of artist into an
easy or lucrative profession.
In _The Mummy, The Widow, The Egyptian at his Doorway_, Tadema for
the first time applies the methods of genre painting to the treatment
of antique themes. This novel manner of dealing with archæology,
which is really of his creation, has found a large school of
imitators, none of whom, however, approach the master either for
spontaneity of conception or skill of execution. This leaning
towards genre and its application to subjects that had hitherto not
invited treatment in this manner, may probably be traced to Tadema's
Dutch origin, seeing that the Dutch were past masters in this form of
composition, which by them was chiefly used to illustrate trivial
moments of their immediate environment.
The most remarkable of these works is the _Death of the First-born_;
indeed, Tadema ranks it as his best picture, and has never yet
accepted any offer for its purchase. It hangs permanently in his
studio, and is looked upon by his family as a priceless possession.
The date of this work is 1873, when the artist had already begun to
turn his attention to those Greco-Roman themes with which his fame
has since been so closely associated. As the picture is not familiar
to the world from reproductions, we will describe it at length.
In this picture of the last, worst plague of Egypt, we find pathos,
despair, and that silent grief which "whispers to the o'er-fraught
heart and bids it break."
We enter a great Egyptian temple where darkness and gloom, oppressive
in their intensity, are only relieved by the gleam of moonlight seen
through a distant doorway, and by a single lamp which makes the
surrounding shadows more deep. In the foreground is a pillar with
hieroglyphics inscribed upon it, its capital lost in the darkness
gives a strange sense of awe, but the pervading influence, the power
of the scene, is the apprehension of death which seems to rest over
the mighty columns, which fills the great temple, which bows to the
earth Pharaoh himself, for it is his first-born who lies dead before
him. Priests and musicians are gathered round lamps standing on the
floor. The priests are chanting their prayers, and the musicians are
touching strange-looking instruments. The entire effect is gloomy
and awe-inspiring in the extreme. The colouring is sombre with its
inimitable use of greens and browns. The surroundings fitly prepare
us for the central group of four persons who cluster round the figure
of the desolate king. It is one of the extraordinary effects of this
picture that the accessories strike the observer first, and in their
mournful disposition prepare him for the chief interest, although
both spiritually and actually, Pharaoh and his attendants hold the
centre of the canvas. The king sits upon a low stool, and across his
knees lies the slender body of his first-born. The dead face of the
almost nude youth is indescribably sweet, and around his neck hangs
limply a strangely-fashioned golden chain, probably bearing some
amulet to shield the king's son from harm. The king, upon whose
figure the light falls, wears his crown, the brilliant jewels of
which seem to mock his helpless grief. He sits rigid, immovable, the
strong, proud man will make no sign, but there is one feature which
even his powerful will cannot control, his mouth trembles ever so
slightly, so faintly that at first it is not distinguishable. But
what grief it expresses, this faint indistinctness of outline! This
figure might be taken as the embodiment of grief, grief fixed and
immutable, and like all true emotion, truly expressed, with not a
hint of morbidness. The mother sits near, bowed to the earth in her
sorrow. She, too, has striven to be strong, and even in this
outburst of despair, shows self-restraint. At the other side of
Pharaoh sits the physician whose powers have been useless in this
combat. Outside the temple door two figures approach. They are
Moses and Aaron coming to behold their work.
This is a truly marvellous picture, and it is not strange that Alma
Tadema retains it in his own hands. It is so true, so complex, so
alive, that at every view, with every changing light it reveals new
features, new aspects of sorrow, and yet with its profundity of
sorrow it is not too tragic to live with. It is so true, so human,
so beautiful, and so deep, that it does not repel. About Alma
Tadema's art there is nothing false or strained; he is always
healthy, there is in his nature no strain of morbidness, and hence
whatever he paints appeals direct to the truest feelings, whether he
paints the glad, sensuous world of the ancients, or the tragedies
which befell them, there is never in his work the sickly
introspection, the hyper-analysis of modern days. Just as in his
_Tarquinius and Emperor_, Alma Tadema proved that he could express
tragedy, so here he has shown conclusively that he can express pathos
and that he is possessed of a deep imagination, which, unfortunately,
he puts forth all too rarely. Had Alma Tadema created but this one
superb work he would be among the greatest artists of our time.
This _Death of the First-born_ is a true representation of Egyptian
life, and, as if to prove how accurate are the artist's instincts, it
is noteworthy that he placed at the feet of the dead a wreath of
flowers which strikingly resembles a like garland, found ten years
after the picture was painted, in the royal tombs of Deir el Bahari.
Meantime however, as we have said, he had begun to paint genre
pictures of Greek and Roman life, and so numerous are these, so
rapidly did he produce them, that it is impossible in our limited
space to enumerate even the most important. We have chosen a few at
random, taking care however to select from among the most noteworthy.
One of his finest early Roman pictures is, beyond question, the
_Tarquinius Superbus_, in which Tadema has shown what tragic power he
could wield when he wished. But his general inclination leads him to
let us see his men and women merely as they present their outward
faces. He cares not to look beyond, to apprehend the informing
intention, the psychic force of his creations.
This idiosyncrasy is based on the artist's character which is
singularly direct, and to which introspection and analytic research
is distasteful. Of quite a different character is the _Pyrrhic
Dance_, a wonderful _tour de force_. We are made to feel that these
Dorian fighters, executing a war-dance, are heavily armed, and that
it is only their skill and agility which makes their choregraphic
evolutions appear light under such heavily handicapped conditions.
Indeed, as we know from history, but few could execute with grace and
skill this "mimic warrior armour game" as Plato calls it, it might so
easily become ridiculous and it is not the least of Tadema's merits
in this canvas that he has treated it without the least touch of
exaggeration, and with a gravity and dignity that are truly admirable.
_The Vintage_, painted just before Tadema's removal to England, is in
some respects one of his most important and most characteristic
works. It has been objected that Alma Tadema is essentially a
painter of repose. To this picture as well as to the _Pyrrhic Dance_
this criticism cannot be applied. The first thing that strikes us as
we look at the work is the sense of motion and music which it
imparts. Another of the objections sometimes made to Alma Tadema's
work is that his men and women, but more especially his women, are
not in accordance with usually recognized classical standards. His
favourite types are rather of the heavy build that would be connected
more readily with Holland than with Rome, though in some of the
portrait busts of empresses preserved in the Vatican, and other
sculpture galleries, we see frequent precedents for this preference,
a preference that became more and more emphasized after the artist's
removal to England. In learning, in technical excellence, in the
remarkable finish of all the multitudinous details, the work is
admirable. Here, too, he has not permitted the details to distract
our attention from the main intention of the picture; we think first
and last of the procession and put the accessories, correct and
wonderfully painted though they are, into their proper artistic
place. Alma Tadema's pictures may at times seem to proclaim too
loudly the equality of all visible things, and this equal attention
to each object sometimes prevents the concentration of our attention
upon the central point of interest. It is this peculiarity which led
Ruskin to make his savage and most unfair onslaught upon the painter
in his Academy Notes of 1875.
The _Sculpture Gallery_, a newer and more skilful version of a
previous picture on the same theme, painted in 1864, furnished the
tag upon which Ruskin hung his attack. This later _Sculpture
Gallery_ was the companion to the Picture Gallery exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1874, which was again a sort of extension of an
earlier work called the _Roman Amateur_. In the atrium of a Roman
house, a fat swarthy Roman, a man of little distinction, no doubt a
_nouveau riche_ of his period, exhibits to his visitors a silver
statue. There is an impressive pomposity about his manner, as though
he were dilating upon the statue's intrinsic metallic worth rather
than upon its artistic merits, and his guests seem to be on the level
of his own artistic tastes.
In the two versions of the _Sculpture Gallery_ this idea is extended.
In the first version the famous Lateran statue of Sophocles was
introduced, and indeed forms the central point of interest. Around
it are grouped three Romans, one woman and two men, evidently eagerly
discussing its artistic merits. All Tadema's fine draughtsmanship,
all his unique skill in the painting of lucent surfaces is here to
the fore.
The second _Sculpture Gallery_ was yet more elaborate in design and
purpose. The work of art exhibited in this instance is placed within
a back shop of the epoch, the front towards the streets being
reserved for smaller and less important objects. A company of rich
amateurs has evidently sauntered in to behold the latest acquisitions
of the dealer. A colossal vase, poised upon a revolving pedestal, is
especially claiming their attention. A slave slowly turns it round
that they may view it in every light. We know him to be a slave by
the crescent-shaped token he wears suspended from his neck. The
effect of in-door and out-door illumination, and of reflected light
from the shimmering surfaces of the objects in the shop is rendered
with scientific accuracy and rare technical ability. Full of
ingenious and most difficult light effects, too, is the _Picture
Gallery_, in which we see a crowd of noble Roman dames and knights
admiring the triptychs of the period wherewith the walls are hung and
the easels loaded.
This theme, with considerable variants, had been treated once before
by Tadema. Indeed, he is fond of repeating his initial idea in
different shape. This time the work is called _Antistius Labeon_.
It represents an amateur Roman painter, a contemporary of Vespasian,
showing off his latest productions to the friends who have dropped
into his studio. It seems, so Tadema tells us, that the gentleman
painter, who was a Roman pro-consul, was rather looked down upon by
his contemporaries for his amateur tastes. It was thought
gentlemanly in those days to admire art but not to practise it, an
idea that even in early Victorian days we find not quite extinct.
[Illustration: AT THE SHRINE OF VENUS.]
It was on these two fine works, _The Sculpture Gallery_ and _The
Picture Gallery_, that Alma Tadema's world-wide reputation was first
based. A great continental dealer bought them, and as engravings as
well as in the widely exhibited originals they became familiar to all
lovers of the beautiful. From this time onward Alma Tadema could not
paint fast enough to satisfy the demands made upon his brush; but
this success only increased the rigidity of the demands he made upon
himself. The more successful Alma Tadema has been, the more
conscientious has he become, a rare quality, and one that cannot be
too highly praised or too much admired. His passionate love of
colour, a passion that seems to have grown upon him as time passed,
and as he abandoned more and more his earlier drier manner, found
expression after his election as associate to the Royal Academy in a
number of small but most perfect little canvases that often dealt
with nothing in particular, and to which the artist was at times
embarrassed to give names, or whose titles, when found, were not
specially distinctive, but which each in their kind was a perfect gem
of technique of radiant tints. And after all, why need a picture
have a name, _à tout prix_? Whistler was not so wrong when he
labelled some of his works as "Symphonies" and "Harmonies" of colour.
Such titles would best describe many of Alma Tadema's smaller colour
creations.
And now, his own line fully found, Tadema worked on steadily, without
haste or pause. In a _milieu_ far distant indeed from the scene of
their creation, a London atmosphere, a London sky, he caused to live
again for a while in effigy the men and maidens of Magna Graecia, of
Rome, of Parthenope, and above all of Sicily, for Tadema's out-door
scenes are too southern in feeling and in tone even for the furthest
shores of the Peninsula, and belong by rights to the Syren isle.
Here alone are found the unclouded sapphire skies, the seas
sun-bathed and innocent of angry waves, the luxuriant vegetation, the
mad wealth of roses that seem to spring by magic from Tadema's brush,
and are the outcome of his fervid imagination that can behold these
things with his mental vision while fog and grim winter are raging
outside. It is one of Tadema's rare and precious gifts that he can
see his picture finished before he has put brush to canvas. It is
this gift which makes it unnecessary for him to execute the usual
amount of sketching, indeed, Tadema may be said not to sketch at all;
it is this that lends to his hand his rare security, and this that
helps towards his precision of execution. Everything is clearly,
sharply outlined in his art. His canvases show no quiet, slumberous
distances, no mysterious twilights of life or nature. All is
evident, all is distinct, all sharply defined as in the meridional
landscape that he loves, and all this is rendered with that accuracy,
with those small touches of extreme sharpness, which recall the
precise methods of his Dutch pictorial ancestors. These are merits,
but they are merits that also contain hidden within their excellence
the germs of what by some may be considered as defects. There is apt
to be a lack of repose about a picture of Alma Tadema's, our eye is
not necessarily led at once to the central purpose of the work, each
action seems of equal importance, and is painted in the same scheme
of values.
As an example of Alma Tadema's painstaking, and of how he lets no
trouble or expense stand in the way of making his pictures just as
perfect as possible, it may be mentioned that during the whole of the
winter when he was at work on his _Heliogabalus_ the artist sent
twice a week for boxes of fresh roses from the Riviera. Thus each
flower may be said to have been painted from a different model.
Only once in his life did Alma Tadema paint a life-size nude figure.
This was the work called _A Sculptor's Model_. It was inspired by
the Venus of the Esquiline, then but lately unearthed; the painter's
intention was to show, as far as possible, the conditions under which
such a masterpiece might have been created. It was also painted as a
model for his pupil John Collier, one of the very few pupils whom
Alma Tadema has ever received into his studio.
It should be mentioned that Alma Tadema at times paints in water
colours as well as in oils, a medium he manipulates most
successfully, and which lends itself most admirably to his limpid
effects of sea and sky. He has also of late years taken to portrait
painting. His wonderfully careful technique has here full play, and
the perfection of finish fills us with admiration. But, despite
their merits, it is hard to think of these portraits as Alma
Tadema's; with his name, whether we will or no, we are forced to
associate blue skies, placid seas, spring flowers, youths and maidens
in the heyday of life, and a sense of old-world happiness and
distance from our less beautiful modern existence and surroundings.
THE ART OF ALMA TADEMA
It is fortunately not possible to define with real precision the
position Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema occupies in art, since happily he
is still living and working among us--and long may he so live to turn
out yet other scores of sun-filled joyous canvases, speaking to a
weary and hard-driven generation, of vanished and more placid times,
when existence was less restless and more æsthetically conceived!
Nor, though he has had imitators by the dozen, is it as yet possible
to determine the exact nature of the influence he has exerted upon
the art of his age, for with rare exceptions these imitators have
turned out frigid, lifeless works that bear the same relation to the
master's style and manner as oleographs bear to original paintings.
Neither is it quite possible to classify Alma Tadema's manner. A
number of influences, partly extraneous, or accidental, partly the
result of birth and atavism, have resulted in causing his art to be
_sui generis_. If he must be classed at all, although a much younger
man, he might be grouped with those artists who came to the fore on
the continent soon after the upheaving epoch of 1848, men who
endeavoured to revive the more intimate life of Greece and Rome upon
their canvas, and who in France went by the name of neo-Greeks or
Pompeists. This trend was a reaction from the older classical school
that was headed by Jacques Louis David, whose productions were
distinguished by a certain austere dignity of conception, by
elaborate accuracy of form, but, on the other hand, were generally
cold and unreal in sentiment, unpleasantly monotonous in colouring,
and defective in their arrangement of light and shade.
It has been most felicitously remarked, that if David may be named
the Corneille of the Roman Empire, Alma Tadema may be said to be its
Sardou. He has made his ancients more living, he has resuscitated
them with less visible effort; he seems to have an instinctive
comprehension of antiquity. His is not the Rome of Ingres, of
Poussin, of grand public ceremonies, of battles, of the Forum and the
rostrum, of actions that upheaved the world; he gives us instead the
home life of this people, Rome such as we divine it to have been from
Cicero's letters to Atticus, the life of the ancients as presented to
us in the plays of Terence and Plautus. It is not mere historical
painting that he aims at, indeed his art bears the same relation to
history as does the anecdote to serious narrative, a lighter species
which nevertheless often throws a brighter light upon the past than
scores of learned tomes. And this result is largely achieved by his
love of detail, which causes him to crowd his canvas with masses of
those authentic bibelots which ancient and recent excavations and the
aid of photography have brought within the reach of all.