Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A.

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (acquired directly from the artist in June 1897)
Henry Clay Frick, Pittsburgh (acquired from the above by August 1897)
Knoedler & Co., New York (acquired from the above in 1906)
M.K. Bixby, St. Louis, Missouri (acquired from the above in 1906) Knoedler & Co., New York (acquired from the above in March 1907) Scott & Fowles, New York (acquired from the above in 1910)
Hon. William Flinn, Pittsburgh (acquired from the above in 1910) Dorothy A. Smith
Bequeathed from the above to the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale in 1993

London, Royal Academy, no. 173
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, The Pittsburgh international exhibition of contemporary painting and sculpture, 2^nd annual, 1897-1898, no. 1 (as Waiting and lent by Henry Clay Frick)
Pittsburgh, Frick Art & Historical Center, Collecting in the Gilded Age, Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890-1910, April 6-June 24, 1997, no. 64

Henry George Blackburn, Academy Notes, London, 1897, p. 9
Rudolf Dircks, "The later works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., R.W.S.," Art Journal, supplementary monograph, Christmas issue, December 1910, p. 32
Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 257, no. 381, illustrated p. 460
Gabriel P. Weisberg, DeCourcy E. McIntosh and Alison McQuee, Collecting in the Gilded Age, Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890-1910, exh. cat., Hanover and London, 1997, p. 144-145; 370, n. 86, illustrated p. 144 (in a photograph of Clayton House's dining room), p. 210, no. 64, and as catalogue cover

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting on panel is in lovely condition. The panel itself is flat and the paint layer is stable. The paint layer has been cleaned and lightly varnished. Some slight horizontal cracking has developed which is visible in the lower center in the floor and immediately to the right of the woman's head. This cracking it is not disturbing and there are no retouches.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

While Alma-Tadema's works have long been celebrated for their intricately described scenes of ancient life, his compositions from the 1880s through the 1890s are particularly recognizable for their focus on groups of languoring women, romantic couples, or lonely lovers seated on marble benches or in painted interiors, often with views of water beyond.  These compositions had fairly unspecific storylines, yet the title and visual imagery often hinted at larger narratives (R. J. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 2001, p 147). Indeed the present work's title of Watching and Waiting (or the abbreviated, original title of Waiting) is a fitting one for this scene of a dark-haired beauty, exquisitely dressed and bejeweled, perched expectantly on a tiger-skin covered bench, her clasped hands in her lap, an unfocused gaze awaiting the appearance of a desired someone. It is not until the room is studied more closely that architectural and decorative clues point to the classical tale from which Alma-Tadema took inspiration.  The inscription on the wall at center right reads Andromeda, suggesting the woman we view is the famous mythological princess, wife of the hero Perseus.  The famous lovers and their dramatic tale had long been favorite subjects of artists from Peter Paul Rubens to Frederic Leighton, and countless scenes of Perseus freeing Andromeda from her chains and the mouth of a sea monster hung in European collections. Unlike the majority of these works, Alma-Tadema captures a quieter moment of the tale, perhaps just before Andromeda is led to her rocky imprisonment to appease the gods, or possibly just after her rescue, in which she awaited her contested marriage to the hero (she had been promised to her uncle Phineus, who Perseus eventually would kill).  In either case, the scene is replete with tokens of romance. The small sculpture on a high ledge in the background is that of Cupid trying on a mask of Silenus, the always drunk teacher and nurse of Bacchus.  This sculpture is part of the collection at the Capitoline Museum in Rome and also appears in Alma-Tadema's 1893 masterwork Unconscious Rivals (figure 1).  The Cupid watches over the isolated room, the lone princess, the prow of a waiting boat visible on the calm waters below either delivering her love or promising to take her to him. Completing the longing narrative is Vern G. Swanson's suggestion that the composition is inspired by one of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems which reads in part: "she fixed her gaze upon the blue/of the shoreless sea where soft waves gleamed/For the King would come that way she knew, and long the morning seemed" (Swanson, p. 257).

A number of Alma-Tadema's pictures were shown at Chicago's World Columbian Exposition in 1893, and the artist soon began to attract a number of American clients fascinated with his precisely detailed scenes of ancient life.  Edward Strahan remarked astutely in Art Treasures of America that Alma-Tadema's artistic vision intended "to combat the idea we are apt to derive from the statues and ruins, that the ancients wore bleak, white garments, and lived in an architecture that was square, monumental and unrelieved. On the contrary, as he... shows us, their houses were softened with hangings and garlands, and their robes were sprigged and checkered as gaily as the Japanese (facsimile edition, New York, vol. III, p. 61).  Between 1877 and 1897 William Henry Vanderbilt bought five of the artist's works, and other famous collectors, from the Marquands to the Carnegies to the Walters, followed suit; eventually upwards of thirty percent of the artist's production found its way across the Atlantic (Barrow, p. 147; Vern G, Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World, London, 1977, p. 58).  In turn, Pittsburgh industrialist and emerging art market force Henry Clay Frick visited Alma-Tadema's London studio at 17 Grove End Road, St. John's Wood in 1895 in order to select a work for himself.  This first meeting of the artist and potential patron was less than productive, and it was not until after a return visit in August 1897 that the artist's dealer Arthur Tooth wrote with news of Frick's successful and expensive acquisition of Watching and Waiting for $8,000 (the equivalent of over $200,000 today) (McIntosh, p. 143-144; 371, no. 86).

This acquisition was only the second of the artist's works to reach Pittsburgh, where it was quickly hung in the dining room of tastemaker Frick's Pittsburgh home, Clayton House (figs. 2 and 3, McIntosh, p. 144; 371, no. 88).  Purchased in 1882 and extensively remodeled in 1897, the grand estate became famous for its incredible interior decoration, with its overwhelming array of fabrics, objects and architectural details. As with most substantial homes, the most sumptuously decorated room was the dining room--a public space enjoyed by notable guests who took in a host's good taste along with a fine meal and drink (Kathren Jones Hellerstedt, Clayton: The Pittsburgh Home of Henry Clay Frick: Art and Furnishings, Pittsburgh, 1988, p. 34; 30).  As Clifford Clark suggests "the ideal home was a vehicle for displaying the civilized nature of its inhabitants. Houses were designed to be read like a book, where symbolic meanings would be self-evident to contemporaries (In the American Family Home, Chapel Hill, 1986, n.p. as quoted in Hellerstedt, p. 30).  These rooms and the objects within, like Watching and Waiting, could be viewed over and over to investigate its meaning or decode the decorative details. If this private display were not enough to promote Alma-Tadema's reputation in Pittsburgh, Frick lent it to the 1897 Carnegie exhibition, where it hung among other notable artists Giovanni Segantini, Winslow Homer and Cecilia Beaux.  Indeed, Alma-Tadema's highly detailed, richly decorated compositions, which alluded both to Roman antiquity and to sensual, romantic subjects, were easy status symbols for American collectors.  And while Frick's interest moved increasingly from contemporary to Old Master art at the turn of the century, Alma-Tadema's work remained valuable to the collector; he sold Watching and Waiting  in 1906 in part to pay for Albert Cuyp's Sunrise on the Maas (McIntosh, p. 145).