Above is Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s innocently titled painting The Tepidarium. And the question you ask yourself is – how did those Victorians get away with it?
Alma-Tadema, a Dutchman who became a giant of the high Victorian art scene, features largely in Victorian Olympus, part of William Gaunt’s trilogy on Victorian painters (The Pre-Raphaelite Dream and The Aesthetic Adventure are the other two), which is one of the most readable and entertaining art histories ever written.
Even in his day, Alma-Tadema was characterised, wildly, by Ruskin as ‘the worst painter of the 19th century’, and his reputation plunged in the 20th century to such a nadir that in 1960 the Newman Gallery found it impossible even to give away, let alone sell, The Finding of Moses, one of his most famous paintings. In 1995, it sold for £1.75 million.
What had happened in the interim? The catalyst for the Alma-Tadema revival was one Allen Funt, the creator of the TV show Candid Camera, whose accountant stole all his money, leaving him obliged to sell his large collection of Alma-Tademas, bought while the artist’s reputation was at rock bottom. The ensuing sale at Christie’s in 1973 sparked new interest in the artist, and he has remained one of the highest-priced Victorians ever since.
It’s not hard to see why – that flesh, that marble, those skies… Not a great artist, but certainly not ‘the worst painter of the 19th century’ – for that honour there is an awful lot of competition.
…during monday night’s ‘British Masters’, the new BBC4 series on 20thC british art, the presenter James Fox also voiced his opinion that Alma-Tedema was just about as low as you could go
One of the advantages of blogging Nige is every day, learning anew. I had always thought that Alma-Tadema was Spanish, a sort of chocolate box Picasso.
The Moses picture of the infant’s rescue by the Egyptian social services dept and subsequent transfer to a children’s pyramid is a fine piece of poster art.
I can reveal to you the worst early Victorian painter, the bloke who originally painted our kitchen, Rembrandt van Tweed, discovered after peeling back one hundred and eighty years worth of cover up.
Surely Landseer must take the crown for most execrable popular victorian painter? His painting Saved is knuckle-bitingly mawkish, and let’s not forget Attachment, which was so popular on it’s release that it required an armed guard…
I had hitherto lived a life, if not blameless, then at least free of ‘Saved’ and ‘Attachment’. Then I clicked, not merely on one but unpardonably on both and now, like a tune that refuses to go away…
Jonathon, apologies – to erase the horrific images now burnt upon your retinas I suggest scouring your eyes with a wire brush and a mixture of carbolic soap and lye
Things once seen can never be unseen.
Thanks ever so much, Worm.
That painting was surely a major inspiration for Ken Dodd?
All together now – ‘It’s the wrong way to tickle Mary…’
And for this century, we have the Master of Light….
http://www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/servlet/com.asucon.ebiz.home.web.tk.HomeServlet
Ah yes the great Kinkade… He even has theme park – a village specially built to look like his ‘paintings’ – I believe you can buy a cottage there and live the Kinkade life, whatever the hell that is…