Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was a Dutch-born painter whose scenes from everyday life in the ancient world were immensely popular in its time.Alma-Tadema, the son of a Dutch notary, studied art at the Antwerp Academy (1852–58) under the Belgian historical painter Hendrik Leys.During a visit to Italy in 1863, Alma-Tadema became interested in Greek and Roman antiquity and Egyptian archaeology, and afterward he depicted imagery almost exclusively from those sources.Moving to England, he became a naturalized British subject in 1873 and was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1879. He was knighted in 1899.Alma-Tadema excelled at the accurate recreation of ancient architecture and costumes and the precise depiction of textures of marble, bronze, and silk.His expert rendering of settings provides a backdrop for anecdotal scenes set in the ancient world.His paintings are marked by clarity of color, exactness, and smooth finish; he imagined a Rome of splendor, sunlight, and gentle sentiment.Though admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, his work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been re-evaluated for its importance within nineteenth-century British art.More of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema‘s classical paintings can be found at https://www.wikiart.org/en/sir-lawrence-alma-tadema and https://artrenewal.org/artists/lawrence-alma-tadema/8.