Through all the rooms are scattered portraits of its beautiful women inmates, here a statue of Lady Alma Tadema, there a window into whose delicately coloured panes are fashioned the likenesses of the quaint little girls who have now grown to women, outside under the window of these same daughters' room is a beautiful bit of sculptured frieze bearing the interwoven tulips of Holland, lilies of France, and English roses.
The most frequent guest finds continual surprises in this house whose every accessory is as carefully conceived as one of the details of its master's pictures.
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 is in this congenial milieu that the artist works, a milieu helpful and suggestive to the special character of his art. His life since his removal to England has been uneventful. The saying, "Happy those who have no history" might be applied to Tadema. Hard work, persistent study, unremitting efforts after ever greater perfection of style and treatment, sum up Alma Tadema's artistic existence.
A READING FROM HOMER.
He is essentially a sociable man, a lover of his kind. His work is only interrupted by visits from friends, by weekly afternoon and evening receptions, so charming that the entrée is greatly coveted, by the claims upon his time as Professor at the Royal Academy and member of the Council; demands all of which he fulfils with his characteristic strenuousness and high sense of duty. In 1876 he became an Associate Member of the Royal Academy, and in 1879 a Royal Academician. In 1899 he received the well-merited honour of knighthood at the hands of Queen Victoria.
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. Nothing escapes Tadema's wide-open eyes; he is never too weary to receive a new impression.
As a man he has about him no trace of the pedantry which might be anticipated from the archaic character of his work. He is generous, genial, warm-hearted, a lover of jokes and anecdotes good and bad, a cheery optimist, a boon companion in the best sense of that term. He is also the truest and most faithful of friends, and the kindest and most large-hearted of teachers. His appreciation of the works of others is wide and sincere, and, no matter how different this work may be from his own style and taste, he gives to it its due meed of praise, provided it be executed with honest intent.