Helen Zimmern

“ Through the branches is seen the sky, a sky of purest sapphire, a blue distinct from that of the tideless tranquil ocean, but no less glorious or intense. Nowhere perhaps better than here has Tadema reproduced the effects of summer seas and skies in their brilliant ardour, their palpitating delicacy of hue and texture. The very air that pervades the picture is hot and light, saturated and quivering with the quickening pulsation of a southern sun.
The intimate life of the Roman women has often attracted Alma Tadema's brush. ”

“ The spectator who misses the allusions, the meaning of his subject-pictures, nevertheless finds matter for full and intense enjoyment as he contemplates the lovely fabrics, the cool half-shades, the clear sunlight, the exquisite flowers, the heat-saturated sea and sky, the marbles and the bric-à-brac that appear on almost every canvas, and are painted with a skill, a consummate science that captivates the connoisseur, and with a reality that delights the uninstructed crowd. ”

“ Briefly, Alma Tadema's double nationality, his Dutch birth, his long English residence, coupled with his classic tastes, his admiration for the Japanese, have contributed to render his art a curious complex of conflicting tendencies, tendencies that in themselves are again welded into a harmonious whole by the idiosyncrasy of the man. We seem to feel, even through the medium of his pictures, his kind-heartedness, his quick appreciation of all that is good and beautiful, his dislike of mystery, of vain searchings in dark mental places, his love of sunshine, moral and real. ”

“ London society is familiar with this wiry, strong-set figure, with this face of kindly comeliness, with the cheery voice, with the frank, observant eye, the merry quips and pranks, the energy, the intense love of all that is great, and good, and lovely. To be with him is to feel invigorated, for he seems to have so much superfluous vitality that he is able to dispense it to his surroundings. ”

“ It is not mere historical painting that he aims at, indeed his art bears the same relation to history as does the anecdote to serious narrative, a lighter species which nevertheless often throws a brighter light upon the past than scores of learned tomes. And this result is largely achieved by his love of detail, which causes him to crowd his canvas with masses of those authentic bibelots which ancient and recent excavations and the aid of photography have brought within the reach of all. ”

“ This is a truly marvellous picture, and it is not strange that Alma Tadema retains it in his own hands. It is so true, so complex, so alive, that at every view, with every changing light it reveals new features, new aspects of sorrow, and yet with its profundity of sorrow it is not too tragic to live with. It is so true, so human, so beautiful, and so deep, that it does not repel. About Alma Tadema's art there is nothing false or strained ”

“ It is not often that Alma Tadema leaves the house to which he is devoted, both for its beauty and because it harbours all whom he holds dear, for he is essentially a domestic man. Occasional visits to the English country, which he greatly admires, and rare trips to Italy, which he naturally loves, are all the holidays he allows himself, and even during such changes of place he does not permit himself rest, but is ever studying fresh effects of light and colour, fresh combinations, imbibing fresh artistic suggestions. ”

“ It would be difficult to do justice to the breadth, brilliance and homogeneity (in spite of its innumerable details) of this splendid picture. The painting of the minutest ornaments, the folds of the ladies' garments, even the huge festoons we have referred to, and the delicate sculptor's work of the vases and mouldings on the balcony are equally noteworthy. Even more to be admired are the faces, of which that of the maiden in blue is undoubtedly the sweetest and freshest of all Mr. Alma Tadema's imaginings. ”

“ In this picture all the perfumed profusion of a southern May is summed up within the space of one little canvas. A bevy of matrons, maidens and children precedes what was probably an ecclesiastical procession. They wend their way through the marble-paved streets of Imperial Rome to some temple shrine, therein to celebrate the rites of joy due to the newly awakened season. Flower-crowned are the fair human blossoms, flower-laden their garments, flower-filled the "offering-platters" they are about to lay on the altar of the god. ”

“ On another occasion Alma Tadema expressed his views on the same subject: "It is my belief that an art student ought not to travel. When once he has become an artist, conscious of his own aim, of his own wants, he will certainly profit by seeing the works of the great masters, because he will then be able to understand them, and can then, if necessary, appropriate such things as may appear useful to him. With one or two exceptions the Prix de Rome men are not the foremost of their day. Meissonier, Gerome, van Leys, remained at home till they had become consummate artists. ”

“ It is one of the extraordinary effects of this picture that the accessories strike the observer first, and in their mournful disposition prepare him for the chief interest, although both spiritually and actually, Pharaoh and his attendants hold the centre of the canvas. The king sits upon a low stool, and across his knees lies the slender body of his first-born. The dead face of the almost nude youth is indescribably sweet, and around his neck hangs limply a strangely-fashioned golden chain, probably bearing some amulet to shield the king's son from harm. ”

“ It is dramatic and full of movement. For brilliant colouring, for vigorous drawing, for its admirable archæological verity this picture is distinguished even among Alma Tadema's many distinguished works. Note too that it is painted in proportions so small as would hardly suffice a latter-day Italian artist for the depicting of a cauliflower. But Alma Tadema, far from thinking that a canvas must be large in proportion to the importance of his subject, is of the opinion that minute dimensions tend to excite the imagination and give to a work a more poetic and ideal character. ”

“ Holland, Greece, London and Rome have all contributed their quota to render this house sui generis, and once we have passed the postern gate that leads from Grove End Road into the garden we instinctively feel ourselves incorporated into another world, another clime, and London and its squalor, its fogs and cold, are forgotten for a time. ”

“ It would almost seem at times as though he had painted these accessories with even more care than he bestowed upon his men and women, as if they interested him more. Indeed, where flowers are concerned Alma Tadema seems to give to them an inner life, a very physiognomy, his flowers are inimitable, both as suggestions and as realities. Even in the choice made it is quite remarkable how there is always a peculiar fitness to the picture's theme. ”

“ These supporting poles stand out distinct against the glowing sky, a sky always introduced if possible by Alma Tadema. The hour chosen is late afternoon, when from out the Amphitheatre pour the thousands who have lately thronged the tiers upon tiers of seats that surrounded the arena, high functionaries and proletariat, tender-born ladies and women of the market-place, all equally eager to witness the orgies of blood that were here enacted. ”

“ Rarely has even Tadema's magic brush painted a more luminous work, so suggestive of sunlight, so truly transfigured and remote from life's grosser moments. Here, too, his flesh treatment is above his own high average. The modelling of the woman's figure and of the lover is especially fine.
It seems incredible, and yet it is true, that this composition, a large one for Alma Tadema, with its five figures and innumerable accessories, was entirely painted in the brief space of two months. ”

“ The Roman of Alma Tadema's pictures abides in a world of idle luxury, in which nothing matters much unless it ministers to sensuous enjoyment. It is the outward seeming of life and objects that attracts him, their inner deeper meaning matters to him as little as their subject. The life aim of his men and women seems to be to exist happily and placidly, untroubled by material cares or disturbing emotions. ”

“ The German Egyptologist and novelist, George Ebers, a friend of Alma Tadema's, to whom he dedicated one of his historical tales, once asked him what it was that had turned him from his Franks towards the land of Isis. Alma Tadema replied, "Where else should I have begun as soon as I became acquainted with the life of the ancients? The first thing a child learns of ancient history is about the Court of Pharaoh, and if we go back to the source of art and science must we not return to Egypt?" ”

“ In the far corner is huddled the populace mingled with the lance-bearing soldiers. They are sarcastically amused by Claudius's undignified election to the great Roman throne. Tragedy and comedy are most felicitously fused. Furthermore, wonderful though the details be, as they always are with Alma Tadema, in this case the accessories do not withdraw our attention for one moment from the human interest. Marbles and draperies, metals and flowers, though so perfectly rendered, take their natural place in the composition without detracting from the central interest. ”

“ The fact is that Alma Tadema had of set purpose avoided going to Italy before this date. On this point he had, and has always had, a very pronounced opinion. According to him the influence of Italy is so potent, so epoch-making in the life of an artist, that he should never go there until he is himself mature and has already found his own road. Otherwise all he sees in that magic land only helps to unsettle him, and hence hinders rather than helps forward the evolutionary development of the man's own artistic idiosyncrasy. ”

“ It is fortunately not possible to define with real precision the position Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema occupies in art, since happily he is still living and working among us—and long may he so live to turn out yet other scores of sun-filled joyous canvases, speaking to a weary and hard-driven generation, of vanished and more placid times, when existence was less restless and more æsthetically conceived! ”

“ In the foreground is a pillar with hieroglyphics inscribed upon it, its capital lost in the darkness gives a strange sense of awe, but the pervading influence, the power of the scene, is the apprehension of death which seems to rest over the mighty columns, which fills the great temple, which bows to the earth Pharaoh himself, for it is his first-born who lies dead before him. ”

“ Neither is it quite possible to classify Alma Tadema's manner. A number of influences, partly extraneous, or accidental, partly the result of birth and atavism, have resulted in causing his art to be sui generis. If he must be classed at all, although a much younger man, he might be grouped with those artists who came to the fore on the continent soon after the upheaving epoch of 1848, men who endeavoured to revive the more intimate life of Greece and Rome upon their canvas, and who in France went by the name of neo-Greeks or Pompeists. ”

“ A work that shows him in one of his most tragic moments, a mood he does not often exhibit, for this master of sunny nature prefers to paint sunny themes, is the Ave Caesar! Iò Saturnalia! The story of Caligula's tragic ending and the election of Claudius as Emperor seems to have had a curious attraction for the artist. He painted the theme three times, though with considerable variants, first as the Claudius, then as The Roman Emperor, and finally, and in its finest version, as the Ave Caesar! ”

“ Especially obsequious and excellent in rendering is the figure of the guard who has drawn aside the heavy drapery. A confused heap of corpses, all that is left of those who have been slain in defence of their murdered master, litter the marble pavement. Above them, laurel crowned, smile down in marble indifference the portrait busts of other Caesars now dead and gone to their account. ”

“ Even in the title therefore in this case the inanimate object takes the first place, relegating to a secondary rank the human interest. Very wonderfully does the artist convey to our eyes a sense of the gigantic bulk and height of the huge Amphitheatre, and with accurate archæological knowledge has he reconstructed its form upon his canvas. Here are its two tiers of arcades, whose arches, we learn from the evidence of tradition, inscriptions and ancient coins, were filled, as in the painting, with groups of colossal white marble statues. ”