SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, O.M., R.A. | Expectation (Impatient)

Given by the artist to Queen Alexandra on the occasion of her husband’s accession to the throne in 1901;

Sotheby’s, New York, 31 October 1985, lot 61 where purchased by the present owner

V.G. Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1977, p.141

Williamstown, Sterling & Francine Clark Institute, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, Cincinnati, Taft Museum and Memphis, Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Empires Restored, Elysium Revisited – The Art of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1992, no.46

Expectation depicts a corner of the artist’s beautiful house at Grove End Road, with its serpentine-marble walls and porphyry and gilt window-frames. The same setting had been painted by Tadema in Vain Courtship of 1900 (Sotheby’s, New York, 26 May 1994, lot 88). The mahogany couch, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and furnished with a silk cushion, was one of a pair designed by Tadema for use in his studio around 1893 - one is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. One side of the couch was decorated with a Greek design and the other Egyptian, so that it could be used as a more versatile prop for pictures. As Elizabeth Prettejohn has observed, pictures painted in the early years of the twentieth century at Grove End Road; ‘seem to show ancient Romans within interiors very like those of the modern London studio house.’ (Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi (ed.), Lawrence Alma Tadema – At Home in Antiquity, 2016, p.109)

Expectation was given by the artist to Queen Alexandra in 1901. Tadema had been known to the royal family for some time. Queen Victoria conveyed a knighthood upon him in 1899, he drew a portrait drawing of Princess Victoria of Wales in 1897 and the Empress Frederick was apparently a great admirer of his work.