Lawrence Alma-Tadema: 12 works

'The Dutch-born artist Alma-Tadema achieved enormous success in Britain with carefully researched scenes like this of daily life in the ancient Roman world.'

'It was painted in 1865, shortly after his first visit to London on the occasion of the International Exposition of 1863, where Alma-Tadema was fascinated by the objects from classic and Egyptian cultures that he saw at the British Museum.'

'Alma-Tadema's combination of the archaeological and the anecdotal scored an immense success with a Victorian public well practised at reading the story in a picture.'

'(Art Journal, March 1883, p.67) Alma-Tadema painted two versions of this composition simultaneously: a larger painting (now at the Kunsthalle Hamburg), which was first exhibited at the gallery of the London dealer Ernest Gambart in 1871; and the slightly smaller version (this painting), which was sent to the printer Auguste Blanchard in Paris, to be used as the basis for an engraving. Blanchard's engraving, published in 1874, served to further familiarize Victorian audiences with Alma-Tadema's Dionysian depiction of Roman splendour.'

'Having no portrait to work from Alma-Tadema apparently based this image on an antique bust of the Queen's mother.'

'Lawrence Alma-Tadema made two large-scale versions of The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 BC, taking his inspiration from Shakespeare's play, rather than historic texts.'

'Striving for verisimilitude, Alma-Tadema copied the marble seating of the Theater of Dionysos in Athens, although he substituted the names of members of Sappho's sorority for those of the officials incised on the Athenian prototype.'

'Lawrence Alma-Tadema originally designed the piece as part of a furniture suite for the music room of Henry G. Marquand's New York City mansion.'

'Through attention to details such as architecture and dress, Alma-Tadema evokes scenes of everyday life in ancient Greece and Rome.'

'Although Alma-Tadema took great care in the authenticity of his classical settings, the modern subject would have made the painting accessible to a nineteenth-century audience.'

'One of Paderewski's private concerts took place in the home of the Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who had settled permanently in England and enjoyed tremendous popularity in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.'

'He said: Now if you want to know what those Greeks and Romans looked like, whom you make your masters in language and thought, come to me.'