Refined painting that refers to Sir Alma Tadema's painting depicting a meeting between friends inside an elegant Pompeian patio overlooking the sea. The two girls are dressed in "Roman-style peplos", at their feet a tiger skin that emphasizes the youthful and unkempt atmosphere of the scene. Behind the two protagonists, there is a beautiful sculptural group, also female, depicting two women intent on confiding in each other.
Oil on canvas.
Italy - 1920 (approx.)
Measurements: Height cm. 101 Width cm 69
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, born Lourens Alma Tadema, a Dutch painter. Born in Dronrijp on 8 January 1836 and died in Wiesbaden on 25 June 1912. His body rests in a crypt in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Trained in Belgium at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen), from 1870 until his death he settled in England. The mid-19th century, thanks also to archaeological missions, brought back the taste for ancient civilizations: the Greeks and Egyptians (already before with Winckelmann and the Napoleonic campaigns), Rome and the Pompeian world with the discoveries in Herculaneum and surroundings. Alma-Tadema could not but notice this antiquity that was returning to light. He became, in fact, one of the most famous painters of the late 19th century in Great Britain and considered one of the most influential Victorian painters.
He married Marie-Pauline Gressin in the town hall of Antwerp. Nothing is known about their meeting. They spent their honeymoon in Florence, Rome, Naples and Pompeii. This, his first visit to Italy, developed his interest in representing the life of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the latter since he found new inspiration in the ruins of Pompeii, which fascinated and inspired much of his work over the next decades. A widower with two daughters to raise, Alma-Tadema in 1871 married an English noblewoman, Laura Epps, who lent her features to various paintings.
Two years later he became fully British, in 1876 he entered the Royal Academy, in 1899 he was knighted and in 1907 he was honored with the Order of Merit. Furthermore, his knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelites influenced his painting where he made significant changes to his pictorial palette, also to the consistency of the brushstrokes. With his second wife, he took a trip to the Continent that lasted five and a half months and took them through Brussels, Germany, and Italy. In Italy, he returned to visit the antiquities of Rome and Pompeii and this time acquired several photographs, mostly of the ruins, starting his immense collection of sheets sufficient for extensive documentation used for the completion of future paintings. In January 1876, he rented a studio in Rome. The family returned to London in April, visiting the Parisian salon on the way back. For over sixty years he gave his audience exactly what they wanted: distinctive and elaborate paintings of beautiful people in classical settings. His incredibly detailed reconstructions of ancient Rome, with languid men and women posing against white marble in the dazzling sunlight, famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languid figures set in fabulous marble interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling sea and blue Mediterranean sky seen from the houses of Pompeii
Already at the time the critics defined his paintings as a sort of museums, a gallery of perfectly outlined archaeological objects, in line with the antique and collecting culture of the time, expressed in private homes and in the ateliers of artists, full of originals, copies of masterpieces and decorative minutiae of all sorts and genres. Alma-Tadema's great skill and originality is vigorously revealed in the rendering of materials: precious and sophisticated objects, refined fabrics of which he manages to render the consistency and quality with surprising virtuosity.
Amazing sets of shining marbles form the backdrop to his creations, a sort of spectacular and ideal setting in which the precious visions of the artist come to life.
Sensuality and pleasantness animate the painting of Alma-Tadema who shuns the representation of violent images, even if handed down from antiquity. With ancient clothes, he clothes and ennobles Victorian society, with all the splendor of the homes, the sophisticated elegance of women's clothing, the allusive enigmaticity of apparently normal family ménages.
