Laurens Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)
L. Alma-Tadema,
Sir Laurens Alma-Tadema
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Dupont Vicars 1901 Text:
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Laurens Alma-Tadema, one of the foremost figure painters of the century, and one of the most
successful in every material sense, was born in Belgium, at the town of Drourp in the province of
Friesland, in 1836. His father was a notary, with a quite prosperous practice, and, purposing that
his son should continue his business, he educated him with this point in view. The boy was sent to
the college at Leeuwarden, and in his leisure from school carefully trained to the office duties of
his father's profession. But the art spirit woke in him early, and asserted itself against all parental
objections and restraints. He practiced drawing secretly. He made experiments in color. He pored over
the engravings and the old missals in the college and the public library. He was particularly fascinated
at the college lectures by those which related to the Greek and Roman antiquity, and while his father
believed that he was acquiring the knowledge necessary for a provincal lawyer, he was laying the
foundations for a knowledge which was to render him a greater and wealthier man than his plodding
parent ever dreamed of being. At last his pentup love for art broke forth with irresistible force.
He was sixteen years of age. It was time for him to go to work in the notary's office. He refused.
His father yielded to his supplications, and sent him to the Antwerp Academy to become a painter.
He commenced to study at Antwerp in 1852, when Wappers and Dykmans were the professors at the Academy.
In 1859 he left the Academy and entered the studio of Baron Leys. Such a school suited such a scholar
as Alma-Tadema, and he calls himself to-day a pupil of Leys and De Taye. In 1861 he exhibited his first
really worthy original picture, and it was purchased by the King of the Belgians. This gave him not only
profit but encouragement and the commencement of a reputation. He travelled in Germany, Italy, France;
visited London; studied the works in the great collections everywhere, and worked unceasingly himself.
He made a special study of classical art and literature, and gradually, but slowly, and only as his
knowledge increased, and he felt certain of his material, gravitated towards the field of subjects to
which he eventually devoted himself and upon which his fame rests. He was already prosperous, for his
pictures sold from the easel, when he married the daughter of a wealthy English manufacturer, whom he
had met on one of his numerous visits to London. His wife, herself, possessed strong artistic talent, and
under his tutelage has become so good a painter that the name Laura Alma-Tadema is now sought for in the
catalogues of the London exhibitions. In 1871 he settled in London, having previously had his studio in
Brussels, and in London he remains, in spite of the fact that the dynamite explosion of Regent's Park in
1874 destroyed his house and his fine classical art collection, and compelled him to build a newer - and
much more palatial - home.
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