1. One of the most popular Victorian painters, Alma-Tadema was admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and accurate depictions of Classical antiquity, but his work fell out of fashion after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been appreciated for its importance within Victorian painting.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was born on 8 January 1836 in the village of Dronryp in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was the sixth child of Pieter Jiltes Tadema, the village notary, and the third child of Hinke Dirks Brouwer.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's father had three sons from a previous marriage.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's father died when Lourens was four, leaving his mother with five children: Lourens, his sister, and three boys from his father's first marriage.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's mother had artistic leanings and decided that drawing lessons should be incorporated into the children's education.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema received his first art training with a local drawing master hired to teach his older half-brothers.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was encouraged to depict historical accuracy in his paintings, a trait for which the artist became known.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema left Taeye's studio in November 1858 returning to Leeuwarden before settling in Antwerp, where he began working with the painter Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, whose studio was one of the most highly regarded in Belgium.
Under his guidance Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted his first major work: The Education of the children of Clovis.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema related that although Leys thought the completed painting better than he had expected, he was critical of the treatment of marble, which he compared to cheese.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema collaborated with Hendrik Leys on the series of wall paintings in the Leys Hall on the second floor of Antwerp City Hall, which depict significant moments in the history of The Netherlands.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema took this criticism very seriously, and it led him to improve his technique and to become the world's foremost painter of marble and variegated granite.
In 1862 Lawrence Alma-Tadema left Leys's studio and started his own career, establishing himself as a significant classical-subject artist.
Nothing is known of their meeting and little of Pauline herself, as Lawrence Alma-Tadema never spoke about her after her death in 1869.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's image appears in a number of oils, though he painted her portrait only three times, the most notable appearing in My studio.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema would consult Discanno a number of times before Discanno's death in 1907 to ensure his paintings of antiquity would reflect the lifestyle of residents of the Greco-Roman world accurately.
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 encouraged Lawrence Alma-Tadema to leave the continent and move to London.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema incorporated Alma into his surname so that he appeared at the beginning of exhibition catalogues, under "A" rather than under "T".
Lawrence Alma-Tadema did not actually hyphenate his last name, but it was done by others and this has since become the convention.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema became one of the most famous and highly paid artists of his time, acknowledged and rewarded.
In 1872 Lawrence Alma-Tadema organised his paintings into an identification system by including an opus number under his signature and assigning his earlier pictures numbers as well.
On 19 June 1879, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was made a Royal Academician.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema spent a significant amount of time studying the site, going there daily.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was childlike in his practical jokes and in his sudden bursts of bad temper, which could as suddenly subside into an engaging smile.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema has been said to have had most of the characteristics of a child, coupled with the traits of a consummate professional.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was an excellent businessman, and one of the wealthiest artists of the nineteenth century.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was as firm in money matters as he was with the quality of his work.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's output decreased with time, partly on account of health, but because of his obsession with decorating his new home, to which he moved in 1883.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema assisted with organizing the British section at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, as well as exhibiting two works that earned him the Grand Prix Diploma.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema assisted with the St Louis World's Fair of 1904, where he was well received.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema began to design furniture, often modelled after Pompeian or Egyptian motifs, as well as illustrations, textiles, and picture frames.
Between 1903 and his death, Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted less but still produced ambitious paintings such as The Finding of Moses.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema died there on 28 June 1912 at the age of seventy-six.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's works are remarkable for their depiction of flowers, textures and hard reflecting substances like metals, pottery, and especially marble.
From early in his career, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was particularly concerned with architectural accuracy, often painting objects from museums, such as the British Museum in London.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema took many images from books and amassed an enormous number of photographs from ancient sites in Italy, which he used to achieve the most precise detail in his painting.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a perfectionist, repeatedly reworking parts of paintings until he found them satisfactory.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was sensitive to every detail and architectural line in his settings.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's work has been linked with that of European Symbolist painters.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema influenced European painters such as Gustav Klimt and Fernand Khnopff, who incorporated classical motifs, as well as Alma-Tadema's unconventional compositional devices such as abrupt cut-off at the edge of the canvas.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema was one of the most popular painters of the Victorian era, and among the most financially successful, though never matching Edwin Henry Landseer.
The last years of Lawrence Alma-Tadema's life saw the rise of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism, all of which he disapproved.
Only since the 1960s has Lawrence Alma-Tadema's work been rediscovered for its historical importance in the evolution of English art.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema is regarded by art historians as one of the principal classical-subject painters of the nineteenth century, whose works demonstrate the care and exactitude of an era mesmerised by trying to visualise the past, some of which was being recovered through archaeological research.
The Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham holds several archive collections relating to Lawrence Alma-Tadema, including letters, artwork and photography.