Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence

(born Jan. 8, 1836, Dronrijp, Neth.—died June 25, 1912, Wiesbaden, Ger.) Dutch-British painter. After studies at the Antwerp Academy, he visited Italy (1863) and became enamoured of Greco-Roman antiquity and Egyptian archaeology; the ancient world was to provide his primary themes. After settling in London in 1870, he excelled at the accurate re-creation of ancient scenes, exotic costumes, and the sensuous depiction of beautiful women against backgrounds of marble, bronze, and silk. Such figurative images combined sentimentality and anecdote. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1879 and knighted in 1899. Alma-Tadema's work was immensely popular in his day, but it went out of favour after his death.

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