classical by placing their protagonists in large empty monumental
spaces, just as Corneille and Racine thought to give the true
classical ring to their plays when they removed them from every-day
emotions, and rolled out high-sounding and rhetorical phrases. Alma
Tadema, instead, is convinced that these dead-and-gone folk were in
all fundamental essentials like to ourselves, that they lived, loved,
joked and chattered just as we do, and this conviction has found
expression in his pictures that deal less and less with the graver,
grander moments of their existence, and more with the petty intimate
details of their home life. His pictures might almost be said to be
a series of instantaneous reproductions of the life of the Roman
patricians. The plebs have no interest for him, they rarely figure
in his canvases, and when they do their figures are entirely
subordinate. The Roman of Alma Tadema's pictures abides in a world
of idle luxury, in which nothing matters much unless it ministers to
sensuous enjoyment. It is the outward seeming of life and objects
that attracts him, their inner deeper meaning matters to him as
little as their subject. The life aim of his men and women seems to
be to exist happily and placidly, untroubled by material cares or
disturbing emotions.
In his method of composing his pictures Alma Tadema's manner is also
the absolute antithesis of what is commonly regarded as the classic
method. So far is he from putting his principal personages well into
the middle of his canvas, from following a pyramidal arrangement,
that in his effort to be natural and unconventional, he even at times
commits extravagances in order to escape from the beaten path, as,
for example, in his portrait of Dr. Epps, in which there are shown
one head and a bust, no arms, but three hands, the third being that
of the unseen patient whose pulse the physician is supposed to feel.
This is an extreme instance, but a tendency to dismember his figures,
to show us only half a figure, a detached head, a hand without a
body, a foot without a visible leg, occurs every now and again, and
not certainly to the detriment of a realistic effect, but most
certainly to the detriment of composition as classically understood.
This tendency, no doubt, results from his love of Japanese art, an
art that has had a visible influence upon his methods of disposing
his composition. Indeed, it might almost be said that Alma Tadema
does not compose his pictures at all. He certainly does not do so
according to the ordinary acceptance of the term in art, he rather
disposes his personages about his canvas, apparently at hazard, much
as they might group themselves in real life. But under this seeming
negligence, is hidden great care, immense painstaking, a striving to
give to his pictures their maximum of expressive force, for in Alma
Tadema's work, everything as well as every person, has its suggestive
purpose. As M. de la Sizeranne has well said, few painters have less
of that element which in the jargon of the studio is known as _poids
mort_. But this very merit causes his pictures to lack
concentration. There is no point on which our eye fixes at once as
the central, most important, and the meaning of the whole may often
be hidden in some accessory that the ordinary observer is apt to
overlook. Thus, for example, in one of his Claudius series is seen,
poised on a cippus, a head of Augustus, dominating as it were the
whole bloody, rowdy, undignified scene. How many who see the work
have remarked that the bust is turned toward a picture that
represents a naval engagement, and that underneath this picture is
written the single word "Actium," suggestive of a vast antithesis.
Subtle little touches such as these often render Alma Tadema's more
important works a puzzle to those unversed in classic lore, and
oblige us to class him, if classed he must be, among the erudite
artists whose roots are planted in the soil of literature. Yet,
surely, if there exists a domain where erudition should take a
secondary place it is that of art, which shares with poetry the high
privilege of soaring so high as to have the right to disdain the mere
minutiae of history, the petty details of life.
Happily, Alma Tadema is saved from being a cold, unattractive
antiquarian painter by his rare keen sense of beauty, and here again
we come in contact with the difficulty of ranging him as we might
range his pseudo-classic brethren. The spectator who misses the
allusions, the meaning of his subject-pictures, nevertheless finds
matter for full and intense enjoyment as he contemplates the lovely
fabrics, the cool half-shades, the clear sunlight, the exquisite
flowers, the heat-saturated sea and sky, the marbles and the
bric-à-brac that appear on almost every canvas, and are painted with
a skill, a consummate science that captivates the connoisseur, and
with a reality that delights the uninstructed crowd.
Briefly, Alma Tadema's double nationality, his Dutch birth, his long
English residence, coupled with his classic tastes, his admiration
for the Japanese, have contributed to render his art a curious
complex of conflicting tendencies, tendencies that in themselves are
again welded into a harmonious whole by the idiosyncrasy of the man.
We seem to feel, even through the medium of his pictures, his
kind-heartedness, his quick appreciation of all that is good and
beautiful, his dislike of mystery, of vain searchings in dark mental
places, his love of sunshine, moral and real. Others might paint his
portraits as well, but none can paint those exquisite southern idylls
of which such numbers have issued from his brush and brain. He has
been called the painter of repose. I should rather be inclined to
style him the painter of gladness, of the joy of life. The artistic
world has certainly been rendered the sunnier by his works.
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
Amongst the many famous and popular pictures by Alma Tadema it is a
little difficult to know which to select, and our object has been to
make a representative collection, while avoiding those which are
already familiar to all through the windows of the print shops. A
work that shows him in one of his most tragic moments, a mood he does
not often exhibit, for this master of sunny nature prefers to paint
sunny themes, is the _Ave Caesar! Iò Saturnalia!_ The story of
Caligula's tragic ending and the election of Claudius as Emperor
seems to have had a curious attraction for the artist. He painted
the theme three times, though with considerable variants, first as
the _Claudius_, then as _The Roman Emperor_, and finally, and in its
finest version, as the _Ave Caesar! Iò Saturnalia!_
The first of the series on the subject simply styled _Claudius_
though full of life, solemnity and graphic force, was surpassed by
its successors, into which the artist infused more of his wonderful
genius for archæological indivination. This first Claudius belonged
to a set of pictures ordered from Alma Tadema by the dealer M.
Gambart.
The second, _The Roman Emperor_, was painted after his removal to
London. In this new version Alma Tadema also adopted a scheme of
colour that was absolutely new to him, to the consternation, it is
said, of some of his clients, who saw in this departure an alarming
tendency towards pre-Raphaelitism. According to them it was
distinctly unfair to the public for this artist to change his style.
Where were the white marbles, the dresses of pale, soft tints to
which they were accustomed in his canvases? Here he had boldly
introduced a girl of the Roman people with hair of pure copper tints,
and even the corpse was clad in a dress of brilliant blue and vivid
purple, while the purity of the marble pavement was stained not only
with the blood of the slain, but was also a confusion of restless
coloured mosaics that distracted the eye from the picture's main
purpose. Criticism waxed hot around this canvas which seemed to
threaten a revolution in the artist's methods.
But it was only a passing phase and proved of no real import. Alma
Tadema's pictures continued as before to be distinguished by a
certain calm and majestic solemnity, such as suits best the Roman
people whom by choice he represented. Still this third and finest
version of the Claudius story can scarcely be classed among his
calmer works. It is dramatic and full of movement. For brilliant
colouring, for vigorous drawing, for its admirable archæological
verity this picture is distinguished even among Alma Tadema's many
distinguished works. Note too that it is painted in proportions so
small as would hardly suffice a latter-day Italian artist for the
depicting of a cauliflower. But Alma Tadema, far from thinking that
a canvas must be large in proportion to the importance of his
subject, is of the opinion that minute dimensions tend to excite the
imagination and give to a work a more poetic and ideal character.
[Illustration: "AVE CÆSAR! IO SATURNALIA."]
In this _Ave Caesar! Iò Saturnalia!_ we look upon the man whose
supposed imbecility saved him from the cruel fate to which Caligula
subjected his relations, found by the soldiery in a corner of the
palace where he had hid himself in his dread, a hiding place whence
the Praetorians dragged him forth and proclaimed him their ruler. We
see the elected Emperor, his face blanched with terror, holding for
support to the curtain which has lately hid his trembling form from
the pursuing soldiers and the populace. These ironically salute him
as Imperator. Especially obsequious and excellent in rendering is
the figure of the guard who has drawn aside the heavy drapery. A
confused heap of corpses, all that is left of those who have been
slain in defence of their murdered master, litter the marble
pavement. Above them, laurel crowned, smile down in marble
indifference the portrait busts of other Caesars now dead and gone to
their account. In the far corner is huddled the populace mingled
with the lance-bearing soldiers. They are sarcastically amused by
Claudius's undignified election to the great Roman throne. Tragedy
and comedy are most felicitously fused. Furthermore, wonderful
though the details be, as they always are with Alma Tadema, in this
case the accessories do not withdraw our attention for one moment
from the human interest. Marbles and draperies, metals and flowers,
though so perfectly rendered, take their natural place in the
composition without detracting from the central interest.
And yet how exquisite in their archæological and æsthetic perfection
are these accessories. No wonder that in a picture from Alma
Tadema's hand we look quite as much for the marbles, the hangings,
the stuffs, the mosaics, the trees, and the flowers, as for the faces
of his creations. It would almost seem at times as though he had
painted these accessories with even more care than he bestowed upon
his men and women, as if they interested him more. Indeed, where
flowers are concerned Alma Tadema seems to give to them an inner
life, a very physiognomy, his flowers are inimitable, both as
suggestions and as realities. Even in the choice made it is quite
remarkable how there is always a peculiar fitness to the picture's
theme. Is there not, for example, to note but a few instances, a
tragic impress about the poppy beds in his picture of _Tarquinius
Superbus_? Have not his red and pink oleanders a bloom and blush as
fitting as that on the faces of the young lovers they shade? Do not
the cypresses and the stone pines in his _Improvisatore_ adumbrate
all the solemn mournfulness of a Roman garden? Is there not a
sensual note in the prodigality of roses that inundates his
_Heliogabalus_? Are they not almost arch in his _Love's Missile_, in
_Shy_, to name but a few of the many pictures in which trees and
flowers figure as the very embodiment of the summer of life and
nature.
Indeed, so exquisitely, so superbly painted are these flowers that in
some of Alma Tadema's minor pictures they actually assume the upper
hand, though of course unconsciously to the painter, and become the
protagonists in the composition. There is one picture which he calls
simply _Oleanders_, showing that he recognized himself how the
flowers had impressed his imagination and gained precedence over the
human beings with whom they were associated. Tadema's flowers are
very poems, and had he painted nothing but these he would have been a
great artist.
[Illustration: SPRING.]
It was of course inevitable that when he chose _Spring_ as his theme
the composition should be rich in the delineation of such blossoms.
In this picture all the perfumed profusion of a southern May is
summed up within the space of one little canvas. A bevy of matrons,
maidens and children precedes what was probably an ecclesiastical
procession. They wend their way through the marble-paved streets of
Imperial Rome to some temple shrine, therein to celebrate the rites
of joy due to the newly awakened season. Flower-crowned are the fair
human blossoms, flower-laden their garments, flower-filled the
"offering-platters" they are about to lay on the altar of the god.
The house-tops, those fair flat house-tops of Southern Italy, the
spaces between the columns, the loggias and the porticoes, are
crowded with eager spectators. These, too, are flower-wreathed and
flower-laden. Joy-filled, spring-intoxicated, they rain down upon
the gay procession beneath, posies and blossoms in glad and
multi-coloured abundance. Marble and flowers, sunshine and blue
skies, all life's gladness is here embodied by a painter's loving
brush.
And how easy it all looks. We feel as if the painter had just thrown
all this lovely profusion with rapid hand upon the canvas. But those
who have the privilege of knowing Alma Tadema intimately and have
watched the genesis of his pictures, watched them as they grow from
under his brush, know how long and patiently he worked at this very
canvas which gives an effect of spontaneity as though created _d'un
seul jet_. Again and again did he scrape down his work, erasing
recklessly the most exquisite little figures, the most perfectly
modelled heads, because they failed to satisfy the exigencies of the
painter. Hence in this finished form the _Spring_ represents the
work of two or three pictures. And this is constantly the case in
Alma Tadema's paintings. From each canvas has been erased some gem,
under each picture is hidden some exquisite detail, painted over
regardlessly by the artist; no matter how lovely it may be in itself,
if it fails to fit into the _ensemble_ it is always destroyed. Hence
there is in his pictures no corner or space that is neglected or
hastily blocked in. All is as perfect as he knows how to make it,
and I have heard him say, not rarely, that a little glimpse of sky,
some little peep into the open, has given him as much labour as the
entire picture.
For this excessive scrupulousness, this difficulty to be satisfied
with his own work Alma Tadema has often been criticised by critics.
Quite unjustly so, surely. Without this quality half of his power
would be absent. It is due to this great attention to detail, this
ceaseless searching after ever greater perfection, that Alma Tadema
has made for himself a style of his own. Thus, for example, when he
perceived that his colouring was too sombre, he reformed it by dint
of diligence and care. He has never deceived himself regarding his
own limitations--for who has not limitations, even among the
greatest?--nor has he ever juggled with his æsthetic conscience.
An emancipation from the conventional codes that is almost Japanese
is another feature of his work. Alma Tadema does not hesitate to
show us some of his personages as standing half outside the canvas,
or cut through mid-body, or strangely placed in corners, or at the
edge of the composition. Neither does he deem it needful that the
principal action, as laid down by academic canons, should be placed
in the very centre of the picture. It is this that gives the unusual
note to many of his compositions, that was unusual in the days when
they were still unknown, for since those days his work has been
subjected to that imitation which the old proverb tells us is the
sincerest form of flattery.
[Illustration: AN AUDIENCE AT AGRIPPA's.]
Sterner and more stately than _Spring_, indeed grand in its
conception and execution, is _An Audience at Agrippa's_, in which a
whole historic epoch is crystallized and rendered concrete. Here
fidelity to archæological truth has but enhanced the importance of
the scene and helped to throw it into prominence; nor are the details
unduly emphasized to the detriment of the whole. In some respects
this is one of Tadema's best conceived and most satisfactorily
executed pictures. From an atrium on a high level, down a broad
flight of steps, majestically descends Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the
greatest and mightiest burgher of his day. He is clad in imperial
red, and stands out marvellously against the white marble of the
stairs. His face is set with a look of stern determination that
speaks of unbending will. He is followed by a crowd of persons, some
of whom are still bowing, though Agrippa has passed by. Upon the
landing at the bottom of the stairs--a marvel of blue mosaics with a
tiger skin lying across it--there is a table. On this stands a
silver Mars and materials for writing, for the use of two scribes
standing behind it. Note the character in these heads, the
close-cropped hair that denotes their servile rank, the cringing
salute, each trying to outbid the other in humility of manner. Just
before these figures, at the foot of the staircase, stands the
world-famed Vatican statue of Augustus Imperator, the only man whose
supremacy proud Agrippa would acknowledge, his device being, "To obey
in masterly fashion, but obedience to one person only." Below this
statue, where the staircase seems to turn at the landing, is another
group. These three suitors, father, son, and daughter, are about to
render a gift to accompany their petition, for they know it is well
to conciliate even the wealthy with gifts. Behind the whole shimmers
one of those wonderful effects of light and sky that Tadema rarely
fails to introduce. Like his Dutch ancestors, he is never happy
unless he can get some peep into the open through a window or a
terrace. He welcomes any device by which is accomplished an outlet
to the sky, producing thus an enhanced sense of space and atmosphere.
The greater part of this picture was painted in 1875, when the artist
spent the winter in Rome, being driven out of England by the wreck of
his lovely house in Regent's Park. I well remember those days in the
Eternal City, and one little incident connected with this picture
illustrates a delightful trait in Alma Tadema's character and his
naive enjoyment of his own work. He had finished the tiger skin
which lies at the foot of the stairs, and in his delight over its
successful achievement, he asked me in boyish glee, "Don't you see
him wag his tail?"
Even in the indoor picture called _An Earthly Paradise_ (see
_frontispiece_), the sense of atmosphere and space is not absent.
The tale is here told with direct simplicity, a young mother adoring
her firstborn as mothers have done since time began. The dress, the
furniture, the surroundings are classic, the sentiment is of all
times and all ages.
_A Reading from Homer_ (see illustration, p. 16) reproduces some of
Tadema's favourite devices,--a marble semicircular bench, a distant
glimpse of tranquil sapphire seas, lustrous garments, and
flower-wreathed characters. With eager enthusiasm the reader seated
on his chair recites from a roll of papyrus that rests upon his
knees. Of his four auditors only the woman, daffodil-wreathed, sits
upon the marble exedra. One hand rests upon a tambourine, beside
which is flung a bunch of flowers. The other holds that of a youth
who sits upon the ground beside her. His other hand touches a lyre
idly, but without sound, his entire interest is centred upon the
reciter, whose words he follows with the eyes of his soul and of his
intellect. Yet another youth lies prone upon the marble floor, his
chin resting upon his hand. He, too, gazes in entranced wonder as he
listens to the immortal verses of the Hellenic bard. On the left
stands another figure, also flower-garlanded and wrapped in a toga.
His face reveals that his, too, is a keen appreciation of the power
of the words being recited. Rarely has even Tadema's magic brush
painted a more luminous work, so suggestive of sunlight, so truly
transfigured and remote from life's grosser moments. Here, too, his
flesh treatment is above his own high average. The modelling of the
woman's figure and of the lover is especially fine.
It seems incredible, and yet it is true, that this composition, a
large one for Alma Tadema, with its five figures and innumerable
accessories, was entirely painted in the brief space of two months.
Still, though completed in so short a time, the preliminary studies,
including an abandoned picture, which was to have been called
_Plato_, filled eight months of close application.
[Illustration: SAPPHO.]
Not unlike in general treatment and in general purpose to the
_Reading from Homer_ is the picture simply entitled _Sappho_. In
order to properly comprehend this work, however, some knowledge of
the life story of the Greek poetess is required. Not a few visitors
to the Royal Academy, where the picture was exhibited, imagined, with
pardonable inaccuracy, that the seated figure playing the lute, and
which certainly, at first sight, seems the most prominent, filled the
title role. Instead, this is Alcaeus, the man who desired to gain
the support of the mighty and gifted Sappho, for a political scheme
of which he was the chief promoter. But besides being a political
rhymer, Alcaeus was also Sappho's lover, and as he is here rendered,
it is the lover who is most emphasized. Sappho herself sits behind a
species of desk, on which rests the wreath, bound with ribands, that
was the crown of poets. She is robed in pale green and gray, and in
accordance with tradition, her raven black hair is filleted with
violets. Beside her stands a young girl, her daughter, a sweetly
graceful form, less lovely than the mother, but suggestive of
maidenhood's enchantments. The poetess is seated on the lowest tier
of the marble triple-rowed exedra, on which, at a respectful
distance, are also disposed some of the pupils of her school. Dark,
wide-branched fir trees spread their crowns above this bench. We are
made to realize that their trunks are rooted far below, there where
the deep blue sea, shimmering in the background, laps the earth that
supports this scene. Through the branches is seen the sky, a sky of
purest sapphire, a blue distinct from that of the tideless tranquil
ocean, but no less glorious or intense. Nowhere perhaps better than
here has Tadema reproduced the effects of summer seas and skies in
their brilliant ardour, their palpitating delicacy of hue and
texture. The very air that pervades the picture is hot and light,
saturated and quivering with the quickening pulsation of a southern
sun.
The intimate life of the Roman women has often attracted Alma
Tadema's brush. We see this again and again in _Well-protected
Slumber_, in _Quiet Pets_, in _Departure_, the scene suggested by
Theocritus's fifteenth Idyll, in _The Bath_, in _Apodyterium_ (or
women's disrobing-room), and it is also accentuated in the _Shrine of
Venus_, a scene in a Roman hairdresser's shop. This picture was
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889, where it attracted
considerable attention, not only because of the perfection of its
painting, the beauty of marbles and metals and textiles, the richness
of its soft, full colour, its yellows and blues, but because of the
masterly skill with which the human figures were painted (see
illustration, p. 32).
Two beautiful young girls, one awaiting her turn to be _coiffée_,
caressing the masses of her thick, dark, loosened hair, the other
already dressed, lingering to gossip with her friend, are reclining
on a marble bench. These are so entirely absorbed in their own
beauty that they pay but slight attention to the entrance of a tall,
simply attired matron, who, glancing inquiringly in their direction,
passes on to an inner apartment. In sweeping by she has carelessly
plucked one from a mass of blossoms heaped upon a coloured marble
table in the outer shop, and her hand, holding the flower, falls
heavily beside the warm white folds of her gown. At the open lunette
shop window, exposing to view coils and twists of hair, some
attendants are distributing vases and lotions to the customers, whose
heads appear above the marble balustrade, on which stands a deep blue
vase, encrusted with exquisite enamel figures. The figure of the
attendant who is reaching down an alabaster pot is especially
graceful and free in poise.