Customer Reviews

Lawrence Alma-Tadema

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book - well-printed, with beautiful reproductions of Alma-Tadema's work, and well-written. Too often, art books lump Alma-Tadema generically with the pre-Raphaelites or shun him entirely (because his paintings catered to Victorian tastes). This book is almost, but not quite, too much of a good thing, with an in-depth view of Alma-Tadema's career, especially the mentors and travel experiences that shaped his style. Very early paintings and watercolor studies which I had never before seen are included, and I paticularly like the side-by-side presentation of watercolor studies with finished oils of the same scene. Alma-Tadema was a skilled artist whose lush, decorative style and atmospheric historical scenes prefigured the art of Maxfield Parrish. It's about time that a collection of this quality has become available.

Rosemary J. Barrow seems to be having a terrific time writing about the controversial painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Perhaps not as scholarly a tome as the one by Russell Ash, this beautiful volume is graced with the publisher's decision of pairing apposing images of both watercolor and oil painting forms of many of Alma-Tadema's works. The book is a successful pictorial essay.

But it is the well-groomed good humor that Barrow uses to relate the pictorial puns and innuendoes Alma-Tadema subtly adorned his mythology-influenced subjects that makes this volume sing. She has done her research so well that her writing is conversational, a fact that makes perusing this lovely volume even more of a joy. Though Alma-Tadema's works are usually reviewed with a degree of scorn by art historians, here the truly lovely paintings are displayed and discussed with utmost respect - and with the élan of descriptive terms that are as light and wispy as the flowing garments of the Romanesque players on the canvases of the fantasy-inspired painter. The color reproductions and the layout of the book are up to the usual high standards set by publisher Phaidon. This book is both a visual delight and a journey through Victoriana. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, October 05

I'd seen, downloaded, and printed many of Alma-Tadema's works full page in color from the artrenewal web site. I though they were beautiful. The colors and quality were good and the resolution high, but I really wanted a bound copy containing some of his works and this was the one I chose.

I was fairly disappointed. There are some good, clear, reproductions in the book to be sure but a number of them are so poor that it's not worth looking at them. What strikes me as odd is that these same works look good in my printouts and on the web. I can only conclude that some of the illustrations in the book were scanned from old print or negatives rather than being original for this book. That would be understandable if it weren't for the fact that better images are available on the web.

Perhaps this book is the only one about Alma tadema-the greatest master of Victorian age- which deals with his life and works the way it should be. It contains a great collection of his works as high quality pictures as well as a great biography. Just buy it and see what you have missed all this time.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) started as a young boy to delight in the use of pencil and brush. He grew up to be one of the greatest artists of the classical bent, and in my opinion his work is generally superior to that of the earlier French Neo-classicists David and Ingres. For one thing Alma-Tadema was an excellent painter of the human face and form and I find some of Ingres' human forms to be anatomically impossible! Like the Pre-Raphaelites Waterhouse and Rossetti, Alma-Tadema favored classical and mythological subjects, but his faces are more varied and seem to me more real, despite an almost dream-like quality of many of his works.

This book titled (simply enough) "Lawrence Alma-Tadema", by Rosemary J. Barrow, is a gem-like work that presents the story of the artist's life, from his boyhood in Holland to his adulthood as one the the most respected Victorian painters in England, as well as numerous selections of his paintings. As he himself states, he attempted to show the classical peoples in Greece and Rome like real humans (as they were) rather than like some sort of plaster statues, as they were often portrayed. His habit of adding little touches of moral comment or humor to odd parts of his paintings and his complete mastery of his media (oils and watercolor!) make this a very charming book indeed!

This is a fascinating work on a fascinating and under-appreciated master of the human face and form. If you are at all interested in this genre of visual art, this book is a must!

This is the best book I've ever seen about alma-tadema. Includes high quality pictures of his masterpieces. If you love Almatadema's works you should have this special book.

This book is breath taking. The book itself is beautiful, and the reproductions are very well done, though, of course, no book sized reproduction can hold up against the huge originals. I showed this book to some of my adult students, and they, like me, plunged in and were very hard to get out! It was also very reasonably priced.

I am in awe of Lawrence Alma-Tadema as an artist. His work is simply amazing. My only complaint with this book, and the only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is that I wish they had given the artwork more page space in general. Some images are large but many times they crowd the art so they can fit in more text. Personally while the text can be very informative I wish that more of the images were 2 page spreads or just generally larger on the page. If you like reading about the paintings as much as looking at them then this might not be an issue for you.

I have really enjoyed this book. I have never seen many of the paintings and didn't really have a clue as to the motivation he put into his work. I would love to see some really close up images.

I am a big fan of narrative painting. Paintings that tell a story. Alma--Tadema is an excellent painter. Despite that his Romans look like Britons, his historical and Roman era paintings are wonderful vignettes.