1866 · Auszeichnung
Knight of the Order of Leopold
1868
A new contract with Gambart for 34 pictures
In 1868 Alma-Tadema signed another contract with Gambart, for 34 pictures to be painted in three and a half years; the canvases were divided into three categories by size and number of figures and priced at £80, £100 or £120. His buyers included the Spanish collector Marqués José de Murrieta, who acquired more than twenty works, and the American banker W. Prescott Hunt, whose orders led Gambart to sign a contract for another 49 pictures.
28 May 1869
Death of his first wife, Marie-Pauline
On 28 May 1869, after years of ill health, his wife died of smallpox at Schaerbeek, aged 32. Disconsolate and depressed, the artist ceased painting for nearly four months; his sister Artje helped with the two daughters, then aged five and two, and remained with the family until she married in 1873.
1869
First meeting with Laura Epps at Ford Madox Brown's
Soon after his arrival in London in December 1869, Alma-Tadema was invited to the home of the painter Ford Madox Brown, where he met the seventeen-year-old Laura Theresa Epps and fell in love with her at first sight.
c. 1870
“The Pyrrhic Dance”: London and Ruskin's barb
At the London exhibition arranged by Gambart, “The Pyrrhic Dance” was shown with an unusual composition: the figures of the middle ground are spread in an even band while warriors with shields screen them. The picture aroused interest among viewers and specialists, except John Ruskin, who compared the dancers to a squad of black beetles hunting a dead rat.
1870
Move to London: the war, Gambart and Laura
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 encouraged Alma-Tadema to leave the continent; his infatuation with Laura Epps and Gambart's view that London would help his career also weighed. He arrived in London with his daughters and sister at the beginning of September, living first in the house of the painter Frederick Goodall, and anglicised his name, moving “Alma” into his surname so as to appear at the beginning of exhibition catalogues.