A Favourite Custom / The Bath – Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1909
€2.850
“A Favourite Custom” / “The Bath”, photogravure published by the Berlin Photographic Company after the painting (Opus CCCXCI) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1909. Signed in pencil lower left by Alma-Tadema. Coloured by a later hand. Size: approx. 38 × 26 cm (in original frame: 75.5 × 58 cm).
The depictions of Roman baths are among Alma-Tadema’s most successful works. In the foreground we see a cold-water pool (frigidarium) where one woman playfully splashes another; in the background, a changing room (apodyterium) with, behind a curtain, a glimpse into a colonnaded gallery. The composition is largely a reconstruction of the so-called Stabian Baths in Pompeii, excavated in 1824. Alma-Tadema combined architectural elements from the various rooms of the baths, which were divided into separate sections for men and women. The precisely rendered stucco above the doorway, the shape of the room, and the wall niches (imaginatively fitted by the artist with numbered lockers) are based on the well-preserved men’s apodyterium, while the ceiling was copied from the men’s hot bath (caldarium). Alma-Tadema owned photographs of the apodyterium and of other interior and exterior parts of the complex.
The artist enhanced the setting’s opulence beyond that of the Stabian Baths by using marble walls and floors, reminiscent of those in the grand imperial Baths of Caracalla. A few of his favourite classical motifs — such as the silver vase (also seen in Dedication to Bacchus) and the table with lion’s-paw feet (appearing in several of his works) — are here suitably placed within their early-imperial surroundings.
The painting itself was small in size (66 × 45 cm), which minimised the potential effect of the graceful nude figures; they are depicted almost as accessories to an archaeological reconstruction.
Price: SOLD
