Roman Potter

1878

The 1878 World's Fair: silver instead of gold, and an order

He sent ten paintings to the British section of the Paris World's Fair but received only a silver medal: the gold went to the Bavarian H. Herkomer, as Alma-Tadema irritably wrote to Gambart. The offence was made up for by the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour, awarded at the end of the exhibition.

19 June 1879

Elected a full Royal Academician

On 19 June 1879 Alma-Tadema became a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts — the most significant of his achievements; three years earlier he had been admitted to the Academy as an associate.

1882

A retrospective at the Grosvenor Gallery

In 1882 he organised a major retrospective of his entire oeuvre at the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Critics' reviews were mixed: they reproached him for “excessive archaeological detail” and a dryness in conveying emotion.

1883–1886

The Tissot house in St John's Wood: a £70,000 rebuilding

In 1883 he bought a house that had belonged to Jacques Tissot and radically rebuilt it to his own design: the work took the middle of the 1880s and cost £70,000, and he began to live there in 1886. The house had 66 rooms, three studios — his, Laura's and his daughter Anna's — collections of Japanese and Chinese art and of Greco-Roman antiquities, an entrance modelled on Pompeian porticoes, and an inscription “Ars longa, vita brevis” in the apse of the studio.

after 1886

The musical salon: Joachim, Paderewski, Caruso

After the rebuilding was finished the house became above all a musical centre of London: a passionate music lover, Alma-Tadema was friends with many instrumentalists, singers and actors, who also served as his models. Regular visitors included the violinist Joseph Joachim, the composer Ignacy Paderewski, Enrico Caruso and Eleonora Duse, and a close friend was the Dutch violinist Maurice Sons.

1889

“The Dedication to Bacchus” sold for £5,880

Shown at the Academy exhibition, the painting turned a bacchanal into a decorous festival with women and children and was sold at once for £5,880 — the highest price for an Alma-Tadema picture sold in Britain in his lifetime.