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Biography
Born in a Frisian village near Leeuwarden, he was the son of Pieter Tadema, a notary, who died when Lawrence was only four years old. Alma was the name of his godfather. His mother (d. 1863) was his father's second wife, and was left with a large family. It was designed that the boy should follow his father's profession; but he had so great a leaning towards art that he was eventually sent to Antwerp, where in 1852 he entered the academy under Egide Charles Gustave Wappers. Thence he passed to the atelier of Jan August Hendrik Leys. In 1859 he assisted Leys in the latter's frescoes in the hall of the hotel de ville at Antwerp.
His first great success was a picture of " The Education of the Children of Clovis"" (1861), which was exhibited at Antwerp. In the following year he received his first gold medal at Amsterdam. The "Education of the Children of Clovis" (three young children of Clovis and Clotilde practicing the art of hurling the ax in the presence of their widowed mother, who is training them to avenge the murder of their own parent) was one of a series of Merovingian pictures, of which the finest was the "Fredegonda " of 1878 (exhibited in 1880), where the dejected wife or mistress is watching from behind her curtain window the marriage of Chilperic I with Galeswintha. It is perhaps in this series that we find the painter moved by the deepest feeling and the strongest spirit of romance. (continued on the bottom)
IMAGES ARE COMPRESSED FOR FASTER LOADING
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Another distinct series is designed to reproduce the life of ancient Egypt. One of the first of this series, " Egyptians 3000 Years Ago," was painted in 1863. A profound depth of pathos is sounded in "The Death of the Firstborn," painted in 1873. Among Alma-Tadema's other notable Egyptian pictures are "An Egyptian at his Doorway ' (1865), "The Mummy" (1867), "The Chamberlain of Sesostris " (1869), "A Widow " (1873), and " Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh's Granaries" (1874). On these scenes from Prankish and Egyptian life Alma-Tadema spent great energy and research; but his strongest art-impulse was towards the presentation of the life of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the latter.
In 1863 Alma-Tadema married a French lady, and lived at Brussels till 1869, when she died, leaving him a widower with two daughters, Laurence and Anna, both of whom afterwards made reputations the former in literature, the latter in art. In 1869 he sent from Brussels to the Royal Academy two pictures, " Un Amateur romain " and " Une Danse pyrrhique," which were followed by three pictures, including " Un Jongleur," in 1870, when he came to London. By this time, besides his Dutch and Belgian distinctions, he had been awarded medals at the Paris Salon of 1864 and the Exposition Universelle of 1867. In 1871 he married Miss Laura Epps, an English lady of a talented family, who, under her married name, also won a high reputation as an artist. After his arrival in England Alma-Tadema's career was one of continued success.
These, as well as all his works, are remarkable for the way in which flowers, textures and hard reflecting substances, like metals, pottery, and especially marble, are painted. His work shows much of the fine execution and brilliant colour of the old Dutch masters. By the human interest with which he imbues all his scenes from ancient life he brings them within the scope of modern feeling, and charms us with gentle sentiment and playful humour. He also painted some fine portraits. Alma-Tadema became a naturalized British subject in 1873, and was knighted on the occasion of Queen Victoria's eighty-first birthday, 1899. He was made an associate of the Royal Academy in 1876, and a Royal Academician in 1879. In 1907 he was included in the Order of Merit. He received a gold medal at Berlin in 1872 and a grand medal at Berlin in 1874; a first class medal at the Paris International Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. He also became a member of the Royal Society of Watercolors. John Collier was a pupil of Tadema.
Alma Tadema left a large collection of paintings and his huge marble-clad studio to his two unmarried daughters. His work was despised as decadent during most of the 20th. century. It was rediscovered at the turn of the century.