This is Our Corner

by 1871

The Pre-Raphaelite circle: Leighton, Rossetti, Millais

By 1871 he had met and befriended most of the major Pre-Raphaelite painters — most closely Frederic Leighton, who introduced him to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais — and it was in part due to their influence that he brightened his palette and lightened his brushwork.

1871

Marriage to Laura Epps despite objections

Having become Laura's painting teacher, he devised pretexts to be at the Epps house — he painted a portrait of the whole family, for one — and proposed to her during a lesson; her father, Dr George Napoleon Epps, objected to the marriage of the thirty-four-year-old painter to his very young pupil and agreed on condition that they wait, while Gambart too was opposed, fearing a drop in productivity. They married in July 1871: Laura became a well-known artist and the model for his pictures, and the marriage was happy but childless.

1872

Five and a half months in Europe: Pompeii and a photographic archive

With his wife he made a journey of five and a half months through Belgium, Germany and Italy; in Italy they spent much time at the excavations in Pompeii and bought many photographs which, together with a large library, became an important source for his paintings.

1872

A catalogue with opus numbers

In 1872 Alma-Tadema set up a system of numbering his works: every picture received an opus number under his signature and was photographed, and earlier works were numbered retrospectively — the 1851 portrait of his sister Artje became opus I, and “Preparations in the Coliseum”, finished two months before his death, opus CCCCVIII. This protected against forgeries and made it possible to trace the fate of the canvases.

1873

British denizenship by order of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria in Council by letters patent made Alma-Tadema and his wife British denizens, with some limited special rights otherwise enjoyed only by British subjects; it was the last time the procedure was applied. After the spring exhibition of the same year he was admitted as an associate member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours.

1874

A gunpowder barge explosion wrecks the house by the canal

A barge loaded with gunpowder exploded on the Regent's Canal and destroyed Alma-Tadema's London house; the owners were visiting the poet William Bell Scott in Scotland, whose collection the artist was to illustrate. His daughters, who were at home, were thrown from the windows together with their beds but not seriously hurt, and not one painting was damaged, although the studio could no longer be used.