Chapters
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a 19th-century Dutch painter, most of his works concerned the ancient world. Thanks to his outstanding paintings, we can better imagine the amazing world of the ancients.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was born Lourens Tadema on January 8, 1836 in Dronrijp near Leeuwarden, in the north of the Netherlands. The surname Tadema is an old Frisian patronymic meaning “son of Tade”; the same is true of the names Lourens and Alma which come from my grandfather.
Lourens was the sixth child of the notary Pieter Tademy (1797–1840), and the third child of Hinke Dirks Brouwer (approx. . 1800–1863). The father had three children from a previous marriage. Pieter and Hinke’s first child died young, and the second Atje (c. 1834-1876) was the future painter’s older sister, whom Lourens felt very fond of.
In 1838, the Tadema family moved to the nearby town of Leeuwarden, where his father was supposed to earn better money. Unexpectedly, after two years, Pieter died, leaving his wife five children to raise. The mother, having artistic abilities, decided that the children should learn drawing. To that end, she hired a local drawing master to teach the elder Lourens sew-on brothers.
His parents wanted Lourens to become a lawyer and enrolled him in Leeuwarden Middle School. However, in 1851, 15-year-old Lourens fell ill unexpectedly. According to the doctors, the disease was incurable and, according to their assumptions, the child was supposed to live for several years. This event changed Lourens’ life. His desperate mother let him do what he liked. Lawrence chose painting. Contrary to the doctors’ predictions, he completely recovered and decided to devote himself to art.
Education
In 1852, Lawrence went to Antwerp, Belgium to study painting at the Royal Academy there. There he studied early Dutch and Flemish painting under Gustaf Wappers. During his four years of college, Lawrence won several notable awards and competitions.
Before he left school in 1855, he became an assistant to the painter and professor Louis (Lodewijk) Jan de Taeye, whose courses in history and historical clothing made Lawrence very interested. Although de Taeye was not an outstanding painter, he was appreciated by his mentee, who spent three years by his side. Thanks to de Taeye Lawrence, at the beginning of his painting career, he focused on showing representatives of the Merovingian dynasty. Even then, he set his own style, which was based on the faithful reproduction of historical facts and details.
In November 1858, Lawrence left de Taeye’s studio and returned to Leeuwarden for a while, then settled in Antwerp. Then he started working as an assistant to the painter Jan August Hendrik Leys, whose works were highly regarded in Belgium. Under his supervision, Lawrence painted his first important painting – Raising the Children of Clovis (1861). The work shows Queen Clotilde, the wife of Clovis, who teaches her three young children to throw an axe so that they can avenge their killed father. The painting caused a sensation among critics and artists at the Antwerp Art Congress. It is believed that this work laid the foundations for the painter’s future fame and reputation. Leys allowed himself a little criticism of the detail in the painting and found that the marble reminded him of cheese. The author of the work took his attention to the heart and decided to improve this aspect in his works. Over time, he became the world’s leading painter who portrayed marble and coloured granite in a perfect way. The painting was purchased by the King of Belgium, Leopold.
Painting career
In 1862, Lawrence left Leys’ studio and began his own painting career. The Merovingian dynasty was the favourite subject of the author’s works until the mid-1860s. The Merovingians were not a subject that could interest the international community. With this, he turned to a more oriental theme – ancient Egypt, which was extremely popular at the time.
On January 3, 1863, the painter’s mother died unexpectedly. That same year, on September 24, the author married Maria Paulina Gressin Dumoulin, daughter of Eugene Gressin Dumoulin, a French journalist from around Brussels. We don’t know much about his wife, as Lawrence reluctantly spoke about her after her death in 1869. Her images appear in at least three works. The couple had three children. The eldest and only son died of smallpox. The daughters Laurence (1864–1940) and Anna (1867–1943) engaged in culture, literature and art, respectively. Laurence was a great friend of Poland and Poles. Neither of them got married.
On their honeymoon, Lawrence and Paulina went to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Pompeii. This first visit of the painter to Italy developed his interest in the world of ancient Greece and Rome, especially after visiting the ruins of Pompeii. The next decades of his painting activity were to focus on the Greco-Roman themes.
During the summer of 1864, Lawrence met Ernest Gambart, one of the world’s most influential publishers and art dealers. Gambart was very impressed with Lawrence’s works, especially the painting made in the popular Egyptian trend of Egyptian Chess Players (1865). Gambart appreciated the talent of the Dutch painter and arranged for the exhibition of three of Lawrence’s works in London. In 1865, Lawrence travelled temporarily to Brussels, where he was awarded the order of Leopold for special services to the country.