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.
Of his art he rarely speaks, and still more rarely of his art-theories. Indeed he is no theorist, though he knows perfectly well at what ends he aims, and his art, like his personality, is homogeneous throughout. But it is not in his nature to analyze, he follows his instincts, and these are true and right. "To thine own self be true," has been his life motto, and faithfully has he served it.
THE WORK OF ALMA TADEMA
The first in date of Alma Tadema's preserved paintings is a cycle of pictures dealing with Merovingian times. To these Merovingians he was early attracted, partly perhaps because in his old home and birthplace relics, such as coins, medals, armour belonging to that epoch were the only antiquities the soil could boast. Added to this, chance threw into his way Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks and the quaint old chronicler completely captivated his fancy. From this treasure-house of fact and fiction he drew a series of pictures which, if no more historically correct than Gregory himself, were nevertheless carefully pondered pieces of archæological improvisation in which the minute studies of accessories made while still in Frisia stood Alma Tadema in good stead. Clotilde at the Grave of her Grandchildren was an incident entirely without foundation in fact, but one of Gregory's stories had suggested the situation, and Tadema at once realized its dramatic and pictorial possibilities. In treatment this canvas was still a little hard and dry, the influence of van Leys' somewhat arid manner was too apparent. The same criticism applies, but in a less degree, to its successor, the work that won for Alma Tadema his first success, The Education of the Children of Clovis. This, too, was inspired by the old Prankish chronicler, and here also, as often in Alma Tadema's art, a good deal of previous knowledge is requisite in order fully to appreciate the composition. It cannot be denied that this is one of the difficulties of truly understanding the painter's work. His subjects are apt to be at times a little too archæological, a little too literary for immediate or easy explanation. Their atmosphere is inclined to be somewhat remote from common knowledge or interest. Nevertheless in this canvas the tale is sufficiently told, and already the real Alma Tadema is making himself felt in the greater richness of the colouring and in the skilful disposition of the figures. Quite especially free and energetic is the figure of the eldest boy throwing his axe at the mark, and that of his teacher looking on intently to see how his charge conducts himself during this public exposition of his prowess. This work, which is now the property of the King of the Belgians, was bought by the Antwerp Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts for the paltry sum of one thousand six hundred francs, an amount which at the time seemed a large remuneration to its painter.
This picture was followed by yet others, all inspired by the Merovingian chronicles that had taken such a firm hold upon the artist's imagination. In each successive picture the scheme of colour grew fuller and warmer, the dull manner of the master van Leys was more and more abandoned, the real Alma Tadema made himself more and more felt. His own individuality, his own methods of conception became manifest. This is especially the case in a picture called Gonthram Bose, another of the Merovingian series. We here see Alma Tadema already applying his peculiar capacity of filling in every inch of the canvas, thus often giving to the tiniest space a sense of vastness, of distance, of immensity, that renders his smallest works such marvellous gems of concentrated beauty. Of course it took time to learn to do this without arousing a sense of overcrowding, a fault that occurs even in one or two of his later works, but more and more as he advanced this danger was eliminated and the capabilities hidden in this artifice became ever more manifest. The little figures with which he peopled his pictures also steadily advanced in correctness of movement and bore about them a local physiognomy that revived an entire historical epoch in a few square inches of canvas. The whole Merovingian period seemed incarnated in these works.
This same capacity of resuscitating a remote historical time was yet more pleasantly revealed when Alma Tadema at last turned from painting these gorgeous but bloodthirsty barbarians, and applied himself instead to the mysterious land of Egypt, the source of all culture and all knowledge, the land he has never seen, but which he has apprehended so wonderfully with the eye of his brain. 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?"
This migration to the Nile closed what may be termed Alma Tadema's first artistic period, which embraces the ten years that lie between 1852 and 1862. In 1863 he exhibited his Egyptians Three Thousand Years Ago. Here, though archæological knowledge was manifest, Tadema did not sacrifice his picture to a pedantic display of learning. On the contrary, it rather seemed his object to show that these dead and gone old Egyptians, whom we are too inclined to think of as the stiff, lifeless figures that greet us from the temples and stone carvings of their native land, were men and women like to ourselves. A work such as this exhibited great study, more perhaps than that demanded by his Merovingians. But from the outset it was evident that Alma Tadema would not covenant with prevailing fashions in art in order to buy public favour at a cheap price. He would take up no task which did not commend itself to his æsthetic faith, to his individual inclination, to the particular preferences of his taste. Never, even at the outset of his career, when financial success had not yet come, did Alma Tadema convert his function of artist into an easy or lucrative profession.
In The Mummy, The Widow, The Egyptian at his Doorway, Tadema for the first time applies the methods of genre painting to the treatment of antique themes. This novel manner of dealing with archæology, which is really of his creation, has found a large school of imitators, none of whom, however, approach the master either for spontaneity of conception or skill of execution. This leaning towards genre and its application to subjects that had hitherto not invited treatment in this manner, may probably be traced to Tadema's Dutch origin, seeing that the Dutch were past masters in this form of composition, which by them was chiefly used to illustrate trivial moments of their immediate environment.
The most remarkable of these works is the Death of the First-born; indeed, Tadema ranks it as his best picture, and has never yet accepted any offer for its purchase. It hangs permanently in his studio, and is looked upon by his family as a priceless possession. The date of this work is 1873, when the artist had already begun to turn his attention to those Greco-Roman themes with which his fame has since been so closely associated. As the picture is not familiar to the world from reproductions, we will describe it at length.