The Season: A Roman Idyll - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence
THE SEASONS: A ROMAN IDYLL. SPRING – GREEN ON THE FIELDS / IN THE GARDENS OF THE VILLA BORGHESE. Engraving made in 1879 by August Blanchard after the painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. With original hand colouring. Signed in pencil by both Blanchard and Alma-Tadema.

A young girl in a white tunic stands in a field of anemones looking pensively at a flower. Across fields of asphodel and daffodil, youths gather flowers. Rather than being painted in the gardens of the Villa Borghese the scene might also have been inpired by those of the Villa Pamfili. The reviewer of the Royal Academy describes the picture:

Young Roman maidens gathering flowers for the festa to celebrate the opening year. The flowers, that thickly cover the ground like our daisies and buttercups are the star anemone, which attracts the attention of travellers to the Eternal City. The principal figure is a tall girl in a pale dress maiking, as far as the painter’s part of the work goes, perhaps the most lovely picture of the four.


THE SEASONS: A ROMAN IDYLL. SUMMER – THE YELLOW OF BRASS / A ROMAN BATH. Engraving made in 1879 by August Blanchard after the painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. With original hand colouring. Signed in pencil by both Blanchard and Alma-Tadema.

About the painting it was said that the rendering of the yellow brass is masterly, and in the artist’s manipulation there is a sort of ability which seems the last word of consummate modern painting.

The Roman bath was a favourite theme of Alma-Tadema.

The original Summer painting has been over-cleaned and over painted by an extremely inept restorer and therefore considered lost.


THE SEASONS: A ROMAN IDYLL. AUTUMN – THE RED OF FIRE. Engraving made in 1879 by August Blanchard after the painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. With original hand colouring. Signed in pencil by both Blanchard and Alma-Tadema.

In a Roman wine store a Bacchante dances before the bronze herm of Bacchus. The occasion is the annual burial in the cellar of a large amphorae containing that year’s vintage.

The reviewer for the Royal Academy was quite negative towards this painting:

Autumn shows us a wine chamber after the vintage, where the large amphorae, filled for future use, has been deposited and the daughther of the house offers the pious libation to the God of wine for his generous gifts. This we consider the weak picture of the series. The damsel is not in front of the terminal of the god, nor of the smoking basin into which she pours her offering; she holds a flamming torch, but it has no illuminating effects and casts no shades.

However, later critics believe Autumn to be superior to the other three paintings in the series.


THE SEASONS: A ROMAN IDYLL. WINTER – THE BLUE OF COLD. Engraving made in 1879 by August Blanchard after the painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. With original hand colouring. Signed in pencil by both Blanchard and Alma-Tadema.

A poor family in garmets of blue and grey huddle together, partaking of a frugal meal. According to the reviewer of the Royal Academy:

At the foot of one of the columns of a gallery or porch are three women around a brazier, who beguile the time by conversation and a mess of some sort, shich one of them stirs on the fire and another tastes. Aguste Blanchard’s share in this design is perhaps the picture’s greatest triumph. The purity of subdued tones and the texture of the marble base of the the column that forms the background by the side of which we have a glimpse of the snowy landscape, are beyond all praise.

This was the first of four paintings depicting the seasons, all painted in 1877. They were all begun in Rome during Alma-Tadema’s visit there in the first months of 1876. The original Winter painting has been severely damaged.


Size (each image): approx. 16,5 x 33 cm. All engravings are handsomely framed, size: 77,5 x 56 cm.

Price (set of four): €4.800,-