Eye Candy for Today: Anna Alma-Tadema watercolor

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7 responses to “Eye Candy for Today: Anna Alma-Tadema watercolor”

1. 

   Brendan

   September 9, 2013

   Anna was Alma Tadema’s second daughter, born in 1867. There is a painting by AT of her (aged seven) with her elder sister Laurense called “This is our corner” in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. It was painted, like Anna’s picture above, in the family’s London home “Townsend House”. She appears again in “The Sculpture Gallery” and “Sunny Days” from 1874.

   Anna later ( in the 1890s ) painted the Polish pianist Paderewski (as did her mother and father) in the Tadema’s later, more luxuriant accomodation at Casa Tadema in St. John’s Wood. It was she who accompanied Alma Tadema to the Kaiserhof spa in Wiesbaden, Germany where he died in 1912.

   Despite having begun a career as a painter, including exhibiting with some success, Anna never painted again after her father’s death. She died in 1943.
2. 

   Brendan

   September 9, 2013

   And you have me again intrigued by all things Alma-Tadema, Charlie. Particularly those interiors he created, so beautifully recorded by the precocious Anna. And sadly not preserved, unlike the lovely Leighton House.
   1. 

      cparker

      September 9, 2013

      I had seen this portrait of Anna Alma-Tadema, but I wasn’t aware of her career as an artist. Thanks for filling in.
3. 

   Ælle

   September 9, 2013

   Thanks, Charley, for the nostalgic interior.
   On May 28, 1869, Tadema’s wife of six years died of smallpox (one of the deadliest diseases in history!….and very contageous. http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/Annual-Epidemiological-Report-2012.pdf – Page 141) at the age of 32. Marie-Pauline Gressin Dumoulin was the daughter of a French journalist. And it was on their honeymoon in Italy in 1863 – his first visit there — that he had been inspired to paint the life of ancient Rome. He had painted her only a few times, as in My Studio (1867), and after her death, he never spoke of her again. She left him with two young children – daughters, Anna (age two) and Laurense (age five). His son had died of smallpox just four years earlier, in 1865. Grief-stricken, Tadema’s health began to suffer, and he did not paint again until that autumn. Tadema’s unmarried sister, Atje, had lived with him and Pauline; now she helped with the children and kept house for her brother at 29 Rue de la Limite.
   When Tadema’s doctors were unable to diagnose his medical problems, Gambart advised him to consult with English physician Sir Henry Thompson (1820 – 1904). Thompson*, who had been knighted two years ago, was a surgeon and professor at University College Hospital. Six years earlier, he had performed a successful operation on the King of Belgium, who suffered from kidney stones. In London, on December 26, Tadema attended a dance at the home of painter Ford Madox Brown (1821 — 1893) – and met Laura Theresa Epps (1852 — 1909). The daughter of a doctor, Laura was a seventeen-year-old redhead — tall, slim, elegant, educated, musical, and interested in art — and the 33-year old Lourens Tadema fell in love with her.
4. 

   Ælle

   September 9, 2013

   This is a poem that Sir Lawrence’s eldest daughter wrote. I love it.
   Laurence Alma-Tadema
   If No One Ever Marries Me
   Year written: 1897
   This poem was published in ‘Realms of Unknown Kings’, 1897.

   If no-one ever marries me–
   And I don’t see why they should,
   For nurse says I am not pretty
   And I’m seldom very good–

   If no one ever marries me
   I shan’t mind very much;
   I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
   And a little rabbit-hutch;

   I shall have a cottage near a wood,
   And a pony all my own,
   And a little lamb, quite clean and tame,
   That I can take to town;

   And when I’m getting really old,
   At twenty-eight or nine–
   I shall buy a little orphan girl
   And bring her up as mine.
5. 

   Fred Bennett

   September 10, 2013

   For another work by Anna Talmeda see Victorian Watercolours by Christopher Newall published by Phaidon.

   Plate 54 Eton College Chapel 1885
   1. 

      cparker

      September 12, 2013

      Thanks, Fred.

      For the benefit of other readers, here is an Amazon link to Victorian Watercolors.