The Alma-Tademas.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXII, Issue 3872, 11 May 1906, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Alma-Tademas.

Laurens Alma-Tadema —or, to give him the full title and honour lie has won in tho country of his adoption, Sir Laurens Alma-Tadema, R.A.—was born in the tiny Netherlaml village of Dronrijp, in January, 1836. His father was a lawyer with musical and artistic leanings, and his mother had a very sympathetic personality. Little Laurens was early drawn towards tho study of “the joy of form,” though, as ho himself say/;. “I have no claims to bo considered an infant prodigy, notwithstanding my efforts at drawing at the ago of four.” When Laurens was fifteen ho had bis first public exhibition, and found his art appreciated. It was a quite unintentional affair. The boy had painted a portrait of himself, and sot out from home with it under his -arm to show some friends. As he passed through tho town lie was followed by a crowd of small boys, who shouted to the passers-by: “Look, he’s carrying himself under hi.s arm !” Until ho was about seventeen Laurens Alma-Tadema was a sickly youth. Hi.s parents were very much opposed to hi.s artistic desires, for they judged that in painting and drawing there was no •bread-and-butter. Hi.s father was comfortably off as a lawyer, and a lawyer should tho boy bo also. Laurens grew rapidly in stature, hut his growth in strength was meagre. He became more and more sickly. At last the doctor of Iris native village took matters into his own hands. He interviewed the lad’s mother, and advised her to let him have his way and study to bo -a painter, if ho wanted to.

“I am afraid he will live hut a few years, anyhow,” ho said; “but the freedom from restraint mav save him.”

It is said, with what truth one does not know, that when the boy heard the news ho rushed out of the house shouting :

“The clouds have lifted, the clouds have lifted!” Ho began to mend in health from that day, and now, at the ripe ago of seventy, is as hale and hearty as can be desired. Hven when his mother, then a widow, had decided to allow him to follow his bent, she would on no account permit him to drop his schooling. She .scraped and saved and sent, him to a good school where the classics wore taught. Sir Laurens says that in these days he used to tie ia string to his too and lead the other end into his good mother’s hod-room, so that she might, with n jerk, wake him early in the morning, and thus allow him to put in an hour or so at his beloved painting before school time. 'When Id’s schooldays were over he went to Antwerp, where ho entered the Rnval Academy of Art in that city. Just ns his term of studentship ended there, ho was lucky enough to come under the influence of Baron Leys, then one of Belgium’s greatest historical painters. Leys took a groat fancy to the young

student, but ho was occasionally very pointed in his criticisms. Once, while Alma-Tadema was painting “Luther and the Reformers,” the great master looked at the picture of a Gothic table on the unfinished canvas. “That’s all very well,” ho grunted, “ but you know as well as I do that folks always hurt their knees when they sit on a Gothic table. Why don't yon draw a table the Reformers can hurt their knees againstV” On another occasion Baron Lejs walked up to a picture that had just been finished and fired off the sarcastic ccm--111 Yes, it is better than I thought it would be. You draw good cheese! The “good cheese” was marble. Irom that instant Alma-Tadema began to htudy marbles, with the result all the woriel admire to-day. , ~ , G - Most folk must have noticed that Sir Laurens usually signs his work by making his name appear as though it «■ carved on some portion of the marble which is usually so plentifully to toSn Ai» pm mm «h° >» aware that ho never dates his work, but alwai numbers it with Roman numcinl« 'liter his name. _ In his younger days ho was under cou11act to sell all his work to a certain welbknown dealer, who, for business mimeses requested the artist to afrti date all pictures he turned out between T-ilv and December in each year. "But why should I?” queried Almaa“Wcl{ you see, it’s this way,” remanded the dealer. “ The picrtire-buy-ing'season is during the first part-of the year. A buyer sees one of you P taros bo likes. You painted it in the autumn and it is dated last ycai. H;ec« tho’date. ‘Why, tlmts last years he says. ‘I wan t buy that old tlm ■ What can one do?” The artist did not propose to doniy burgling with dates, however, and so mt on g |he e happy expedient of numbering Ca The P, tole r of Alma-Tadema’s introduction to that dealer, who was the famous ■Mr. Gambart, is a curious moe. __ The dealer controlled the maikets, the art markets, that_ is—of nnd the cry “Gambart is here, uould « s «on»der.Mo Hnllor in anj ni-uk-tic circle in those days. Unknown artiste, AlmarTadema among them, would plot to secure a visit fiom “Prince Gambart, only, as a uile, Baron Leys, lowover fought on Alma-Tadema’s sale a d one day purposely misdirected Gai hart’s coachman, so that when the ca - rtage drew up the dealer found tno young artist, all excitement, waiting on the doorstep of his modest studio. Gambart was too good-iatuicd to draw back. Ho went in and looked at •i picture on the easel. There was an impressive silence, and then Gambart SP “l)id you paint that?” he asked. The artist assented. “Then turn me out tivent y-foni pictures such as that and I will buy them every cue. . . . ~ rr>. That was the beginning of Alma-Ta-dema’s fame. Ho subsequently settled in England, became a naturalised Lito„, was made an R.A; m 18/9. and exactly twenty years later was knighted.