Life of Lawrence Alma-Tadema by Helen Zimmern is in Victorian Books.
Laurens Alma Tadema was born on January 8th, 1836, at Dronryp, a little town in the very heart of the Frisian province of Holland. Hence by birth Tadema is Dutch, though by residence and naturalization he is now an Englishman. His Dutch birth, as we shall see later, was not without significant effect upon the development and character of his art. The father, Pieter Tadema, was an intelligent lawyer with a pronounced taste for music. Unfortunately, while the young Laurens was still a baby, this parent died, and his education and upbringing were left entirely in the hands of the mother. A woman of unusual capacity, she found herself at an early age with four children upon her hands—two, a girl and our painter, being her own offspring, and two her husband's by a previous marriage. The means at her disposal were small; but undaunted, she put herself to fight single-handed the battle of life, and with such success, that by her unassisted efforts she was able to place all her children well. Laurens, her youngest, was also something of her darling, and even as a child he realized all his mother was doing on her children's behalf. To her early example no doubt are due his great powers of perseverance, his undaunted application, his high-minded sense of duty.
Four years after joining her son [Lawrence Alma-Tadema [aged 28]], Madame Tadema died. It is sad to think that this good parent did not live to witness her son's world-wide fame, but pleasant to know that she still heard the praise aroused by some of his first exhibited pictures, and to see him the recipient of his first gold medal, that accorded to him at Amsterdam in 1862. In 1865 Tadema married a French lady, and removed to Brussels, where he remained until his wife's death. This occurred in 1869, when he was left alone with his sister and two little girls, the eldest, Laurence, who has developed into a gifted writer, and the second, Anna, the delicate, dainty artist who has inherited so much of her father's power for reproducing detail.
It was during the lifetime of his first wife that Alma Tadema paid his first visit to Italy and saw with his own eyes the homes of those Romans who were destined to become his most familiar friends.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Marie-Pauline Gressin-Dumoulin were married at the City Hall in Antwerp.
An accident brought Tadema to London in 1870, and here he at once took root. A year later he remarried1, his wife this time being Miss Laura Theresa Epps [aged 19], a woman of rare beauty, and herself a painter of distinction.
Note 1. In July 1871 Lawrence Alma-Tadema [aged 35] and Laura Theresa Epps were married.
