The Nationwide Gallery in London has acquired a serious work by the Victorian painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, in a sale negotiated by Christie’s public sale home. The portray, titled After the Viewers (1879), was bought for £2m from the Pre-Raphaelite collector Isobel Goldsmith.
After the Viewers encapsulates Alma-Tadema’s fascination with historical Rome. It depicts Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the son in legislation of the Emperor Augustus, climbing a staircase at his villa. On the backside of the steps lies a pile of items he had obtained from residents throughout the empire, a crowd of whom are depicted gathered on the precise of the body.
The image was painted for the eye of the engineer and industrialist William Armstrong, who had seen one other work by the artist, An Viewers with Agrippa, at London’s Royal Academy in 1876. But the artist’s resolution to attempt his hand at depicting the tip—fairly than the start—of the assembly appears to have put Armstrong off from buying the brand new model.
Nonetheless, it’s extensively thought of to be one of many artist’s masterpieces of the interval, famous for its scale and complexity of composition.
Alma-Tadema is without doubt one of the best-known artists of his time in Europe. Born within the Netherlands, in 1836, he studied and labored in Belgium earlier than transferring to London in 1870. He’s usually related to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a lot of whose members he befriended, and with whom he shared a Romantic type. His love for antiquity, nevertheless—sparked by a tour of Italy throughout his honeymoon—additionally hyperlinks his work to that of educational artists comparable to Frederic Leighton. He grew to become a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1879 and was knighted 20 years later.
After the Viewers is the primary work by Alma-Tadema to enter the Nationwide Gallery’s assortment. Its acquisition, a part of the gallery’s ongoing two hundredth anniversary celebrations, brings to the gallery a contemporary instance of “Neoclassicism and Aestheticism, two necessary creative actions inside the Western custom which have largely been unrepresented at Trafalgar Sq. from the mid twentieth century,” says Christine Using, the establishment’s curator of British work and director of collections and analysis.
“The image enhances the long-term mortgage of Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna by Leighton (on mortgage from His Majesty The King), and pertains to different Nineteenth-century artists influenced by the classical custom, as may be seen with Ovid among the many Scythians by Eugène Delacroix,” Using continues.
The sale was facilitated by Christie’s personal gross sales division. Peter Brown, the public sale home’s senior director, British & European artwork, stated in an announcement: “Christie’s is delighted to have brokered this sale to the Nationwide Gallery on behalf of Isabel Goldsmith. The image is of excellent high quality and is testomony to Miss Goldsmith’s spectacular connoisseurship. It is extremely satisfying that Earlier than the Viewers and After the Viewers are actually each in public collections, in Kilmarnock and London.”
Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the Nationwide Gallery, stated: “We proceed to have fun our two hundredth anniversary with our third acquisition this 12 months. We are able to now symbolize in our assortment the Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who, after settling in London grew to become an important determine within the British artwork world of the late Nineteenth century. We’re grateful to the legacies of Martha Doris Bailey and Richard Hillman Bailey, Gillian Cleaver, and Sheila Mary Holmes, with the assist of the Nationwide Gallery Belief, for enabling us to purchase this excellent image.”
