In a Rose Garden, Lawrence Alma Tadema
Oil on panel; roughly 15 x 20 inches (37 x 50 cm). Link is to Wikimedia Commons page from which you can access a larger image. This was sold through Christies in 2012, so I assume it’s currently in a private collection.
The painter reveled in flowers and flower petals, drapery and stone in this idyllic fantasy scene. It features one of Alma Tadema’s characteristic extremely high horizons, practically at the top edge of the composition. There is just enough indication of a land form, and what appear to be tiny suggestions of ships, to break up the straight line of the sea.
Link: In a Rose Garden, Wikimedia Commons
Do you have an idea what technique was used to produce the stippling effect? Is this a common one for Alma Tadema?
I noticed that too, and I don’t know. I do think it looks similar to the stipple technique used by Victorian watercolorists, which I believe to be essentially a drybrush technique. I haven’t noticed it in many other Alma Tadema paintings, but they’re not always reproduced in enough detail that it would be visible.
Perhaps the book with over 500 pages by Robert Verhoogt can provide for the
answers? I don’t know.
Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-century Prints After Lawrence Alma-tadema …
Good luck, Charley!
Thanks, ælle.