Lawrence Alma-Tadema detail authenticity

[Basemetalatwork]

Many here are familiar with the works of Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Admittedly very interpertaive in many cases.  But, how authentic are his details in his ancient roman paintings?  I must admit the one with Caracalla, Geta and Severan Period' target='_blank'>Septimus Severus strike a certain chord of "I bet that's a lot what it looked like."
I'd  love a general discussion of the artist and the details of his work.

[slokind]

Is there an image of the painting you have in mind on line, to which you could give a link?  Pat L.

[Optimo Principi]

One of my favourite painters. He was obviously inspired by the notion of bitter sibling rivalry, explored brilliantly here in his paintings "Caracalla and Geta" and "The Triumph of Titus". I think many of the details are as, or very close to how it must have been. I particularly like the individual appearances of the Severan family, which match all the surviving portraits and take into account their north african heritage. And then the Coliseum and The Triumph, well you can almost hear the roar of the crowds coming from the painting. Exquisite detail.

[gallienus1]

I simply love Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. He is the very opposite to the stereotypical artist. In short-

Stereotypical Artist                       Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Deprived background                   Middle class background
Starving and penniless                  Rich and prosperous
Rejected by the establishment      Loved by the establishment
Hopeless with money                   Canny businessman
Prone to addictions                       Social drinker
Torrid affairs with models             Respected models
Unhappy marriage                        Happy marriage 
Unknown in life time                     Famous while alive
Famous after death                      Forgotten after death
Work appreciated after death        Work despised after death

To me he was a genius of the first rank. Of course every artist can fall prey to fashion, and in the Victorian era the fashion was to portray sentimentality. Some of his work is sentimental- but perhaps that is better than being totally devoid of sentiment- as loveless and pitiless modern art so frequently demonstrates. Is it so wrong to love Alma-Tadema’s young woman throwing flowers to her lover over the dismembered woman of a Picasso?

Best Regards,
Steve

[commodus]

I think the whole Victorian era has been grossly underrated by later generations. To a degree that disdain seems to be reversing now, however. Some might call me a Philistine for saying so, but the art, architecture, and overall decorative style of the mid-to-late 19th century is my favorite, surpassing (for my taste at least), most that went before it (post-Classical, of course), and all that came after.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Things have changed a lot already, so hopefully they'll continue to do so. when I was a kid I remember all things Victorian were looked down on. At that time they were still demolishing Victorian terraces by the hundred to make room for tower blocks which were hailed as the solution to all our urban problems (!). Attitudes to furniture etc were comparable. Victorian stuff now has a value.

[Metrodorus]

Well, and I hate to come across as some boorish low-brow art lover, but I absolutely despise Tadema's work, the work of the academic artists, and indeed all art and culture of the Victorian era. It's not just insipid, sentimental, and weak, but also reeks of an age rampant with imperialism, colonialism, and classism, some of  the major factors that led to WWI, which led to WWII, which led to the Cold War, which led to the chaos that we have now, both political and environmental (the Gulf of Mexico disaster).

I say give me a work by George Grosz or John Heartfield any day of the week!

George Grosz's "Eclipse of the Sun": http://www.thebreman.org/exhibitions/online/1000kids/grosz15.JPG

John Heartfield's "O Blessed Christmas": http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/heartfield_xmas.jpg

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

That's a lot to dump on poor Tadema!  I enjoy some of his paintings (a guilty pleasure), but I respect John Heartfield much more.  Georg Grosz is not my cup of tea, but, numismatically, I love Karl Goetz (politically, not so much).  George S.

[commodus]

I'm not even going to try to reply to AQ save to say that I (respectfully) disagree with both his theories of art and his interpretation of modern history.

[Will Hooton]

I'm not even going to try to reply to AQ save to say that I (respectfully) disagree with both his theories of art and his interpretation of modern history.

Strongly agree. It's a sad day when we judge art through politically tinted glasses.

[Andrew McCabe]

As someone who very much enjoys the type of early 20th century modern art, with its bleak and shocking messages, cited by Aamil Q, but also enjoys luxuriating in an Alma Tadema from time to time, I'd make a couple of comments

- AQ's post may have been part-serious and part (or all) humorous in intent. For many of us the jarring juxtaposition of Alma-Tadema with Grosz is pretty amusing, for some of us perhaps shocking. However it's a fact that Alma-Tadema has just as often been epitomised as "bad art" as "great art", and Grosz, and the new objectivity movement of the 1920s, is undoubtedly original and important in an art-historical viewpoint, whether you like it or not. The judgement of Numismatists (we who enjoy pretty, and pretty conventional, ancient-Greek art-forms) is probably not of much import in these matters.

- If it requires AQ's message to bring out the point that much of art has a political genesis, then that bears thinking about in the context of ancient Rome and Greece. Virtually all the painting, scupltural and numismatic art from ancient times comes with some form of political message embedded, whether that is the overt messages in Roman Republican denarii or Imperial sestertii, the covert messages of a Vandal king copying Roman coin types (and thus placing him inside the classical world), or the blatant messaging of the finest Sicilian-Greek die-cutters (we are a highly civilised, artistic and developed people, with room to create luxury in our lives, and not merely outcast colonists of old Greece).

Alma-Tademas Victorian sponsors may think they were supporting the same messages as the finest Greek artists. But perhaps their message was really the same as the Vandal kings of a sacked Rome who copied the Roman style. "We, The Victorians, can make pastiche copies of Ancient Greek art and thus hope that some of the Ancient Greek magic rubs off on our Vandal modern kindom of steam and steel".

[commodus]

AQ's post may have been part-serious and part (or all) humorous in intent.

I missed that somehow.

A thought: it has, perhaps, to do with how we look at art and how we define it. I think too often talent and originality are confused. Something may be original but artistic talent was not necessarily involved in its creation. Likewise, the opposite is often true.
I speak only for myself here, but I will always choose that which is created to be beautiful over that which was created to make an editorial statement.

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

After all that "beauty," a dose of Grosz is just the thing to clear the sinuses.  I do enjoy looking at the lass flinging the flowers, though, but I don't think art (better: Art) has anything to do with it.  George S.

[slokind]

As an unusually promiscuous (not in the sense you may think of) art historian, I must say that the more you know and think about it the more you enjoy and profit from works of art.  There are, of course, persons who are innately the visual equivalent of tone deaf.  Then there are social science addicts, who have to consider everything in terms of ideologies, and 'watchmakers' who value everything by tiny and accurate detail.
There's nothing wrong with detail or even ideologies, but it takes a great artist to succeed in the face of them.  Same as with novels written around worthy ideals with great accuracy: if you can't write War and Peace, better leave them to others.
As for enjoyment, there's always simple personal taste.  Alma Tadema can be, as George said, quite good, but Gérôme and, in another manner, Puvis de Chavannes, and Lord Leighton (not to mention late Bouguerau) all can surpass him.  But they don't keep me from Hans Hoffmann or Arshile Gorky or de Koonnig.  Or Grosz or Schiele.  On the other hand, I love Grant Wood.
I could go on and on, so I'll just get to the point.
It's not that I like genres (kinds) of art, but that I adore (the word is not too strong) the very best in all the genres.  Same goes for anonymous works, for example from West Africa or ancient Egypt or the Inuit.  Nameless or not, there are great artists among them and many mediocre or who-cares? workers among them.  There's that one artist who did Huey, Dewey, and Louie for Disney comic books (and all the others are forgettable).  Even Export or Tourist stuff has its masters.
I like Heartfield because he often is great.  Likewise Kandinsky.  But only a few Franz Marc (for me) rise above the Bambi level.  The Musée d'Orsay has done a splendid job in choosing the best in one way or another to put permanently on exhibit.
Pat L.
Delacroix, Carpeaux, and Fremiet all could get by with things that would defeat or shame a minor artist.  But Delacroix, the greatest, could almost always do it.
Horizontal images are CLICKABLE

[gallienus1]

As usual a very interesting and informative post Pat, I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t heard of Frémiet or known of his work Pan and the Bear Cubs.
I understand that for historical drama few can approach Delacroix, but his aim was to show the passion and tragedy of human existence not to be accurate. Alama-Tadema’s primary aim was. He literally wanted to bring the past to life. His painstaking accuracy (as far as the archeological evidence of the time would allow), coupled with the intense detail often gives his best work the same dream-like quality as a Pre-Raphaelite.

As sentimentality is so ugly and repulsive to the younger members of the board, lets not cause more upset and consider a work of Alma-Tadema that is most unsentimental.

He went to enormous trouble in his work Antony and Cleopatra, modeling Cleopatra on a bust of her mother Bernice. She is depicted waiting for Mark Antony on her barge, apparently lost in thought. Anthony looks apprehensive as he prepares to board and his fellow Romans cannot help but to stare at the mysterious Queen who has such power over their master.

Best Regards,
Steve

[gallienus1]

To show that I’m just as low brow as Aamil Q here is my favorite George Grosz, The Wanderer.
It is a noble picture of a man carrying a cane and clutching his coat to his chest as he trudges through a cold, wet wilderness. Behind him are explosions and fire. The determination on his face tells the viewer he will endure this suffering and make a new life somewhere else. The picture was painted in 1943, during World War II, ten years after George Grosz fled Hitler’s Germany.

Best Regards,
Steve

[Optimo Principi]

Thanks for reminding me of the awesomeness of Anthony and Cleopatra Steve. I love the artistic framing devices he uses and the details like the boats in the background and the looks on the faces of Anthony's guards are priceless. My new desktop picture!

[Will Hooton]

here is my favorite George Grosz, The Wanderer.

Best Regards,
Steve

Now that is better. I prefer it to the politically saturated work Aamil linked to.

As sentimentality is so ugly and repulsive to the younger members of the board, lets not cause more upset and consider a work of Alma-Tadema that is most unsentimental.

I'm young, it's not repulsive to me! Here is my favourite Delacroix, in all it's bourgeoisie glory!

[Robert_Brenchley]

I'd be the first to agree that the Victorian age had terrible faults. I know too much about how they set Sierra Leone, my wife's country, up for its more recent tragedies, and they did a great deal to establish the attitudes towards technology that set us on the road to environmental disaster. But I wouldn't decry art from any era. Alma-Tadema may be sentimental and imperialist at times, but art of any time will always encapsulate the attitudes of its era in a way that's easier to understand than history books! And then at times, art transcends its era. At his best, we can still appreciate him today, and I can't see anything wrong with that.

[slokind]

Did gallienus 1 mean to?  Anyway, Steve (gallienus 1) has drawn attention to the essential distinction for Alma-Tadema.
Among those who consider top-drawer work analytically, A-T's work always has been regarded as faithfully illustrating facts, some of them tragic, others not, as basemetal indicated by asking about his showing actual coins at the head of this thread.  That is, he has always been appreciated as an illustrator, both by the general public and by other illustrators and by artists whose primary interest is other than faithful illustration.  For A-T, illustration was primary, and he used the current styles of his period for that purpose, often quite skillfully.
For the PreRaphaelites such as Burne-Jones and such painters as Lord Leighton, the subject matter of antiquity and of foreign lands was rich with stylistic / pictorial and purely expressive possibility and was a point of departure for their ends as artists.  The painting or sculpture was primary and the subject matter (point of departure) was secondary.
Real students of art do not make Art (capitalized) an hypostasis to be worshipped.  They do not denigrate illustration, but they do differentiate.
Worship or denigration of one or the other is in the realm of art journalists or docents.
I am glad that you posted an example of Grosz as a sympathetic illustrastor; I think he WAS essentially an illustrator, working in Germany in terms of anti-fascist cartoons and in the US in terms that perhaps Thomas Hart Benton or Norman Rockwell would have understood: at first, he floundered to choose a manner of illustration that suited him in his new home.
This distinction affects the understanding of coins only marginally.  One can say perhaps that Syracuse chose engravers for their art, for art's sake, but generally the officials in charge of mints chose engravers for their ability to represent the official point of view in a reserved style that people in general would not take offense to.
Remember (I would say): artists uses subjects for their artistic possibilities, and illustrators use art for its capacity to illustrate subject matter. Neither one is better or superior to the other; each has its own realm and its own audience.  The same is true, by the way, of photography, for art's sake or to show what the photographer wants to be seen.

[Metrodorus]

As someone who very much enjoys the type of early 20th century modern art, with its bleak and shocking messages, cited by Aamil Q, but also enjoys luxuriating in an Alma Tadema from time to time, I'd make a couple of comments

- AQ's post may have been part-serious and part (or all) humorous in intent. For many of us the jarring juxtaposition of Alma-Tadema with Grosz is pretty amusing, for some of us perhaps shocking.

Andrew, thank you for getting the gist of my post. It certainly was part-serious/part-humorous in intent, the humor coming out at the end when I said "Give me a Grosz or a Heartfield any day of the week!" I even offered a caveat emptor at the beginning when I wrote: "Well, and I hate to come across as some boorish low-brow art lover..." indicating that it was simply my own views on the subject at hand!  While I do love the art of George Grosz and John Heartfield, I do not reserve my love of art to only the ouvre of these two artists, otherwise I wouldn't have joined the FORVM discussion board. Indeed, I also love the variety of art produced not only in the Modern era, but also that of the Renaissance (both Italian as well as Northern), Gothic, Byzantine, Late Roman, Hellenistic, Egyptian, Neolithic and Paleolithic art. I'd also include the art of the Scythians, and that of India, Japan and China, especially the Buddhist murals of the Mogao caves in Dun-Huang, Kizil, and Bezeklik.

Now, when I said that I "despised" Alma-Tadema, at the time I couldn't find a suitable word to describe what I felt. So please forgive me for taking more of your time to elaborate what I meant to convey. There are two major reasons as to why I have such a strong disliking towards Alma-Tadema's work. First, it's the content of his work and how he presents it to the viewer. His work has a tendency to look only at the surface appearance of things, to always look at the "bright side" of life rather than going deeper into life's far darker side, and the way things really are.
Secondly, Alma-Tadema's work is a product of the Victorian era, which was a time of economic inequality and rapid expansion of empire. This was the case not only for Great Britain, but also every major European power, as well as the United States and Japan. Naturally, this would create some tension among the powers as to how much territory (and which) they would control. (The Boer War anyone?) Coupled with that we have extreme nationalism and nationalistic movements steadily growing in Europe, such as Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism. On top of that we have a military arms race between the powers as well. Whatever the intent of the powers that be, the fact that people willingly obeyed in going to war in 1914, and committing all manner of atrocities is certainly tied to these factors.
The Second World War certainly stemmed from the First; both Hitler and Mussolini even used the previous war as pretext to do what they did, which certainly contributed to it's unfolding. Subsequently we have the Cold War, a product of WWII, between the United States, and the Soviet Union, (which was a product of WWI), and every conflict and disaster, political, human, and environmental, that it gave rise to both during the Cold War, as well as after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Given the atrocities commited by man during the past century, and in the first few years of this new century and the state of the world as a result, is something that I find completely unforgiveable. The last thing we need(in my personal opinion), is to turn away from the darker aspects of life, and rather acknowledge and confront them.

[Metrodorus]

here is my favorite George Grosz, The Wanderer.

Best Regards,
Steve

Now that is better. I prefer it to the politically saturated work Aamil linked to.

As sentimentality is so ugly and repulsive to the younger members of the board, lets not cause more upset and consider a work of Alma-Tadema that is most unsentimental.

I'm young, it's not repulsive to me! Here is my favourite Delacroix, in all it's bourgeoisie glory!

Will, that is a fantastic Delacroix, and I can assure you, far from bourgeois!
As far as depicting the heydey of ancient Rome, aside from Delacroix, David, and certainly Andrea Mantegna, very few, in my opinion, have done it so well!

[Metrodorus]

To show that I’m just as low brow as Aamil Q here is my favorite George Grosz, The Wanderer.
It is a noble picture of a man carrying a cane and clutching his coat to his chest as he trudges through a cold, wet wilderness. Behind him are explosions and fire. The determination on his face tells the viewer he will endure this suffering and make a new life somewhere else. The picture was painted in 1943, during World War II, ten years after George Grosz fled Hitler’s Germany.

Best Regards,
Steve

Gallienus1, thanks for sharing Grosz' "The Wanderer" with the rest of us. It's an excellent painting in both content and excecution.

[Optimo Principi]

Great thread but the question originally asked was "How authentic are the details in his roman paintings?". Only Slokind has really touched on this, I think there's good discussion to be had on this point as well as a general discussion on the merits of his work.

[gallienus1]

Yes good point Kained but Able, to return to the point of the thread, I think Alma-Tadema did reliably and accurately portray the ancient past- within the limits of the archaeology of his time.
An example is his painting Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens. Alma-Tadema had studied the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and was well aware of the passionate debate in academic circles as to whether the Greeks painted their sculpture or not. He came down on the “correct” side that they did, and the result is this painting.

Let me set the scene. No less than Pericles, his mistress Aspasia and the Athenian leader’s trouble-to-be nephew Alcibiades have come to see the work in progress. Pheidias, a noble figure with a long beard and holding a scroll waits patiently to answer their questions, while the Athenian citizens in the foreground appear to have suddenly become aware of just how beautiful the Parthenon will be.

Best Regards,
Steve