The greater part of this picture was painted in 1875, when the artist spent the winter in Rome, being driven out of England by the wreck of his lovely house in Regent's Park. I well remember those days in the Eternal City, and one little incident connected with this picture illustrates a delightful trait in Alma Tadema's character and his naive enjoyment of his own work. He had finished the tiger skin which lies at the foot of the stairs, and in his delight over its successful achievement, he asked me in boyish glee, "Don't you see him wag his tail?"
Even in the indoor picture called An Earthly Paradise (see frontispiece), the sense of atmosphere and space is not absent. The tale is here told with direct simplicity, a young mother adoring her firstborn as mothers have done since time began. The dress, the furniture, the surroundings are classic, the sentiment is of all times and all ages.
A Reading from Homer (see illustration, p. 16) reproduces some of Tadema's favourite devices,—a marble semicircular bench, a distant glimpse of tranquil sapphire seas, lustrous garments, and flower-wreathed characters. With eager enthusiasm the reader seated on his chair recites from a roll of papyrus that rests upon his knees. Of his four auditors only the woman, daffodil-wreathed, sits upon the marble exedra. One hand rests upon a tambourine, beside which is flung a bunch of flowers. The other holds that of a youth who sits upon the ground beside her. His other hand touches a lyre idly, but without sound, his entire interest is centred upon the reciter, whose words he follows with the eyes of his soul and of his intellect. Yet another youth lies prone upon the marble floor, his chin resting upon his hand. He, too, gazes in entranced wonder as he listens to the immortal verses of the Hellenic bard. On the left stands another figure, also flower-garlanded and wrapped in a toga. His face reveals that his, too, is a keen appreciation of the power of the words being recited. 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. Still, though completed in so short a time, the preliminary studies, including an abandoned picture, which was to have been called Plato, filled eight months of close application.
SAPPHO.
Not unlike in general treatment and in general purpose to the Reading from Homer is the picture simply entitled Sappho. In order to properly comprehend this work, however, some knowledge of the life story of the Greek poetess is required. Not a few visitors to the Royal Academy, where the picture was exhibited, imagined, with pardonable inaccuracy, that the seated figure playing the lute, and which certainly, at first sight, seems the most prominent, filled the title role. Instead, this is Alcaeus, the man who desired to gain the support of the mighty and gifted Sappho, for a political scheme of which he was the chief promoter. But besides being a political rhymer, Alcaeus was also Sappho's lover, and as he is here rendered, it is the lover who is most emphasized. Sappho herself sits behind a species of desk, on which rests the wreath, bound with ribands, that was the crown of poets. She is robed in pale green and gray, and in accordance with tradition, her raven black hair is filleted with violets. Beside her stands a young girl, her daughter, a sweetly graceful form, less lovely than the mother, but suggestive of maidenhood's enchantments. The poetess is seated on the lowest tier of the marble triple-rowed exedra, on which, at a respectful distance, are also disposed some of the pupils of her school. Dark, wide-branched fir trees spread their crowns above this bench. We are made to realize that their trunks are rooted far below, there where the deep blue sea, shimmering in the background, laps the earth that supports this scene. 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. We see this again and again in Well-protected Slumber, in Quiet Pets, in Departure, the scene suggested by Theocritus's fifteenth Idyll, in The Bath, in Apodyterium (or women's disrobing-room), and it is also accentuated in the Shrine of Venus, a scene in a Roman hairdresser's shop. This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889, where it attracted considerable attention, not only because of the perfection of its painting, the beauty of marbles and metals and textiles, the richness of its soft, full colour, its yellows and blues, but because of the masterly skill with which the human figures were painted (see illustration, p. 32).
Two beautiful young girls, one awaiting her turn to be coiffée, caressing the masses of her thick, dark, loosened hair, the other already dressed, lingering to gossip with her friend, are reclining on a marble bench. These are so entirely absorbed in their own beauty that they pay but slight attention to the entrance of a tall, simply attired matron, who, glancing inquiringly in their direction, passes on to an inner apartment. In sweeping by she has carelessly plucked one from a mass of blossoms heaped upon a coloured marble table in the outer shop, and her hand, holding the flower, falls heavily beside the warm white folds of her gown. At the open lunette shop window, exposing to view coils and twists of hair, some attendants are distributing vases and lotions to the customers, whose heads appear above the marble balustrade, on which stands a deep blue vase, encrusted with exquisite enamel figures. The figure of the attendant who is reaching down an alabaster pot is especially graceful and free in poise.