Product Description
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), was one of the finest and most distinctive of the Victorian painters. Dutch-born, he moved to London in 1870 and became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky. In this original study, Rosemary Barrow presents an absorbing and often amusing portrait of an exuberant personality who carved out a brilliant career for himself at the heart of London's artistic and cultural elite. But above all she subjects the paintings to a fresh scrutiny, and reveals that Alma-Tadema, a knowledgeable student of antiquity, repeatedly used literary and archaeological allusions in his paintings to play a game of interpretation with his viewers. Time and again the seeming innocence of the scenes he depicts is subverted by a mischievously placed inscription or statue, suggesting to the initiated a darker and usually risque meaning. Neglected after his death, Alma-Tadema's paintings are once again admired for their beauty and their remarkable mastery of light, colour and texture. With its intriguing insights into his personality and intentions, this book should provide a challenging reassessment of a major artist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Love this book
I have really enjoyed this book. I have never seen many of the paintings and didn't really have a clue as to the motivation he put into his work. I would love to see some really close up images.

Illustrations not good enough
I'd seen, downloaded, and printed many of Alma-Tadema's works full page in color from the artrenewal web site.I though they were beautiful. The colors and quality were good and the resolution high, but I really wanted a bound copy containing some of his works and this was the one I chose.

I was fairly disappointed.There are some good, clear, reproductions in the book to be sure but a number of them are so poor that it's not worth looking at them.What strikes me as odd is that these same works look good in my printouts and on the web.I can only conclude that some of the illustrations in the book were scanned from old print or negatives rather than being original for this book. That would be understandable if it weren't for the fact that better images are available on the web.

An Artist of Classical Antiquity
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) started as a young boy to delight in the use of pencil and brush.He grew up to be one of the greatest artists of the classical bent, and in my opinion his work is generally superior to that of the earlier French Neo-classicists David and Ingres.For one thing Alma-Tadema was an excellent painter of the human face and form and I find some of Ingres' human forms to be anatomically impossible! Like the Pre-Raphaelites Waterhouse and Rossetti, Alma-Tadema favored classical and mythological subjects, but his faces are more varied and seem to me more real, despite an almost dream-like quality of many of his works.

This book titled (simply enough) "Lawrence Alma-Tadema", by Rosemary J. Barrow, is a gem-like work that presents the story of the artist's life, from his boyhood in Holland to his adulthood as one the the most respected Victorian painters in England, as well as numerous selections of his paintings. As he himself states, he attempted to show the classical peoples in Greece and Rome like real humans (as they were) rather than like some sort of plaster statues, as they were often portrayed.His habit of adding little touches of moral comment or humor to odd parts of his paintings and his complete mastery of his media (oils and watercolor!) make this a very charming book indeed!

This is a fascinating work on a fascinating and under-appreciated master of the human face and form.If you are at all interested in this genre of visual art, this book is a must!

A Flowing and Finely Tuned View of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Rosemary J. Barrow seems to be having a terrific time writing about the controversial painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.Perhaps not as scholarly a tome as the one by Russell Ash, this beautiful volume is graced with the publisher's decision of pairing apposing images of both watercolor and oil painting forms of many of Alma-Tadema's works.The book is a successful pictorial essay.

But it is the well-groomed good humor that Barrow uses to relate the pictorial puns and innuendoes Alma-Tadema subtly adorned his mythology-influenced subjects that makes this volume sing.She has done her research so well that her writing is conversational, a fact that makes perusing this lovely volume even more of a joy.Though Alma-Tadema's works are usually reviewed with a degree of scorn by art historians, here the truly lovely paintings are displayed and discussed with utmost respect - and with the élan of descriptive terms that are as light and wispy as the flowing garments of the Romanesque players on the canvases of the fantasy-inspired painter.The color reproductions and the layout of the book are up to the usual high standards set by publisher Phaidon.This book is both a visual delight and a journey through Victoriana.Highly Recommended.Grady Harp, October 05

Excellent coverage of this Victorian Painter
I am a big fan of narrative painting.Paintings that tell a story. Alma--Tadema is an excellent painter.Despite that his Romans look like Britons, his historical and Roman era paintings are wonderful vignettes. ... Read more

Product Description
The paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema reveal much about 19th-century values. His languid women posed against white marble in dazzling sunlight, his forays into sentimentality, escapism and hedonism were adored by the Victorian public. He acquired fame, honour and wealth, only to have his pre-eminence undermined by the changing tastes of a subsequent generation. This book features his work from private and public collections, in large-format colour plates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

But is it art?
I confess to very mixed feelings about this collection, and about Alma-Tadema's work as a whole. The more positive of those feelings admire his mastery of process and draftsmanship, and his elegant composition in the medium of human figure. His early career emphasized the classics and the myths of Rome and Greece. Later work evokes Parrish's emotional abstractions.

The down-sides are many, though. His models all display a languor that makes me want to check the dose on their muscle relaxants. His scenes tend towards the Roman baths, where it's OK to see hot babes get nekkid. Apparently, he was quite popular among the Vicotrian nouveau riche who wanted the kind of smut you could hang on the wall and show the neighbors. And, oddly, his popularity died just when he did, at least the first time it died.

Then, mid-twentieth-century, Alan Funt rediscovered Alma-Tadema, collected his work, popularized it, and created a market for it. Yes, that Alan Funt, the guy who created the 1950s "Candid Camera" rage. Some cynical voice in the corner of my mind insists that this was Funt's greatest joke ever, turning a 19th-century dealer in parlor-room porrn into a figure of artistic importance.

Truth is, I don't much care. The images are warm and romantic, with the kind of blatant sensuality that both titillates and scolds you for your nasty thoughts, then offers plenty more on which to build more of those nasty thoughts. Warm, drippy, and iffy about the wardrobe, they're wonderful images. Art? I dunno. I like them anyway.

//wiredweird

Awash in Victorian Romance and Classicism!
The Victorian painters are enjoying a posthumous comeback and one of the more famous of these elegant painters was Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema.Exceedingly popular in his time, the modern, reductionist movements of the post-Freud 20th Century brushed his work under the rug - except for those collectors and lovers of the human figure who refused to allow the body to be cubed, flattened, distorted, and abstracted.

Now with the return of the appreciation of the human form Alma Tadema's paintings are enjoying a resurgence of popularity.Russell Ash certainly gives us reason to see why in this lavishly illustrated, beautiful book filled to overflowing with complete paintings and fragments or details of perfect ladies languishing in flora and classical vistas.Paintings that once were labeled as 'corny' are now being appreciated as suggestions of what made the Victorian Era unique.

Ash writes well and thoughtfully minimizes written word space for the flow of the pictorial value of thebook.This is simply a lovely volume honoring a misunderstood and in the past under appreciated artist.Grady Harp, August 05

Fantastic Full Page Reproductions!
This book is filled with full page reproductions of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema's paintings.It also has an interesting bio with pictures of his home, studio, and himself.I've been looking everywhere for a great book on Alma Tadema and I believe this is the one.Besides reading about a painter's life, I think it is very important that we see color reproductions of the painter's work, and this book does it very well.I hate books with 4x4 black and white images of an artist's paintings, its useless.I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book for lovers of Victorian art and Alma Tadema.I recently went to the Getty Museum and saw Alma Tadema's "Spring" and it looks exactly how it appears in the book.The full page color plates are exact reproductions of his paintings, unlike the newer book on Alma Tadema published by Phaidon whose reproductions have been altered and all appear saturated with blue hues.Anyways....GET THIS BOOK IF YOU CAN ONLY GET ONE BOOK ON ALMA TADEMA BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST!

Lovely Art - Spendid Work
If you love Victorian painting of scenes of antiquity (Greece/Rome) then check out this beautiful book.

A short bio on the artist is very interesting and the full sized plates are reproduced in excellent detail and glorious color.No "dup-ey" reproductions here!

An added bonus:Each plate comes with a descriptive page which
describes the painting and what it depicts - a major plus.

Heartily recommended to fans of the genre...or anyone else who loves beautiful artwork masterfully portrayed.

Alma-Tadema,an artist
So that you willunderstand my perspective, I am a professor and a painter mostly of large scale, representational figures, so I buy anything to do with artists who specialize in the figure.In Russel Ash's book, the reproductions were large and fairly clearly reproduced.I enjoy the art of the late 19th and early twentieth century and the detailed realism of Tadema's female figures was, though academic in development, fun to see.Of that era I prefer Waterhouse and others, whose sense of color and less passive work is more powerful and deep, but if you like figure paintings especially of "Victorians in toga's" as one critic of his day describes Alma-Tadema's work, then you will love the large format reproductions.The book is lavishly adorned withsemi-nude, sleepy-eyed, languid, supple, neo-classical women and a few men, all painted in the always safe, pastellish colors of the time.The women are engaged in mostly pastoral time passing non-events."The Roses of Heliogabllus", with it's profusion of rose petals was easily the most colorfully of the reproductions, and a large composition of "Joseph Overseer..." as the most powerful of his offerings.The bio of Alma-Tadema was interesting enough to make me want to know more. If you are an art lover, a collector of large format books of painters, even the 19th cnetury academic styles, this is a good one for you ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
The works of the late Victorian painter Alma Tadema have recently enjoyed a revived interest.This second volume in the Getty Museum Studies on Art focuses on Spring, one of Tadema's most renowned paintings.The book is lavishly illustrated and includes details of the painting, a history, and an analysis focusing on sources, composition, and symbolism. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1875.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Includes 150 illustrations, 100 in color. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more