1836 -1912 · Netherlands, Antwerp, London and Victorian Antiquity

Marble, flowers, sea and archeology transform Antiquity into a sensual, luminous and surprisingly close world in Alma-Tadema.

Laurens Tadema was born in 1836 in Dronrijp, Friesland. Trained at the Antwerp Academy then with the historical painter Louis de Taeye, he developed a taste for documented reconstruction very early on. His meeting with the publisher and dealer Ernest Gambart gave his career an international dimension. Travel to Italy, the discovery of Pompeii and the study of museums gradually moved his subjects from the early Middle Ages to Greece, Egypt and especially Rome. Moving to London in 1870, he anglicized his first name to Lawrence and became one of the most famous painters of the Victorian era. He collected photographs, surveys and objects in order to precisely reconstruct marbles, bronzes, fabrics and architecture. However, erudition never stifles sensation: petals, water, sun and marine views give its ancient scenes immediate freshness. The figures converse, dream, bathe or wait in spaces whose material beauty becomes the real subject. Elected to the Royal Academy and ennobled, Alma-Tadema numbers his great paintings until opus 408. His lasting influence extends from academic painting to film set. His lasting influence extends from academic painting to opus 408. His lasting influence extends from academic painting to film set. The Roses of Heliogabalus and A Favorite Custom are notably compared.

Alma-Tadema makes Antiquity habitable: marble has a temperature, roses a weight and the sea a light.