Fries Museum in the Netherlands
since October 2016
Belvedere, Vienna
February 22 to June 18, 2017
Leighton House Museum, London
7 July - 29 October 2017
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Coign of Vantage, 1895 (detail). Collection of Ann and Gordon Getty |
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity (7 July – 29 October 2017) explores Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s fascination with the representation of domestic life in antiquity and how this interest related to his own domestic circumstances expressed through the two remarkable studio-houses that he created in St John’s Wood together with his wife Laura and daughters. Born in the north of the Netherlands, the exhibition traces his early training and move to London in 1870 where he established a hugely successful career at the heart of the artistic establishment. His work fixed ideas in the popular imagination of what life in the ancient past ‘looked like’ – ideas and images that were taken to the stage, film and that remain with us today. The exhibition includes important works by Tadema himself, his wife Laura and daughter Anna with loans coming from public and private collections internationally.
At Home in Antiquity finds a perfect setting in Leighton’s own studio-house, interiors known to the Alma-Tademas as frequent callers and includes In My Studio presented by Alma-Tadema to Leighton as a token of his esteem and now in a private collection.
Leighton House Museum is the former
home of the Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton
(1830-1896). The only purpose-built studio-house open to the
public in the United Kingdom, it is one of the most remarkable
buildings of the nineteenth century, containing
a fascinating collection of paintings and
sculpture by Leighton and his contemporaries.
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity is organised by the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands (the artist’s home town) and comes to London following exhibition at the Belvedere, Vienna bringing over 100 works to Leighton House Museum as the only UK venue for the show.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, In My Studio, 1893
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Coign of Vantage, 1895