DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.69400#0061
HIS ART
43
point on which our eye fixes at once as the
central, most important, and the meaning of the
whole may often be hidden in some accessory
that the ordinary observer is apt to overlook.
Thus, for example, in one of his Claudius series
is seen, poised on a cippus, a head of Augustus,
dominating as it were the whole bloody, rowdy,
undignified scene. How many who see the
work have remarked that the bust is turned
toward a picture that represents a naval engage-
ment, and that underneath this picture is written
the single word “ Actium,” suggestive of a vast
antithesis. Subtle little touches such as these
often render Alma Tadema’s more important
works a puzzle to those unversed in classic lore,
and oblige us to class him, if classed he must be,
among the erudite artists whose roots are planted
in the soil of literature. Yet, surely, if there
exists a domain where erudition should take a
secondary place it is that of art, which shares
with poetry the high privilege of soaring so high
as to have the right to disdain the mere minutiae
of history, the petty details of life.
„ Happily, Alma Tadema is saved from being a
cold, unattractive antiquarian painter by his
rare keen sense of beauty, and here again we
come in contact with the difficulty of ranging him
43
point on which our eye fixes at once as the
central, most important, and the meaning of the
whole may often be hidden in some accessory
that the ordinary observer is apt to overlook.
Thus, for example, in one of his Claudius series
is seen, poised on a cippus, a head of Augustus,
dominating as it were the whole bloody, rowdy,
undignified scene. How many who see the
work have remarked that the bust is turned
toward a picture that represents a naval engage-
ment, and that underneath this picture is written
the single word “ Actium,” suggestive of a vast
antithesis. Subtle little touches such as these
often render Alma Tadema’s more important
works a puzzle to those unversed in classic lore,
and oblige us to class him, if classed he must be,
among the erudite artists whose roots are planted
in the soil of literature. Yet, surely, if there
exists a domain where erudition should take a
secondary place it is that of art, which shares
with poetry the high privilege of soaring so high
as to have the right to disdain the mere minutiae
of history, the petty details of life.
„ Happily, Alma Tadema is saved from being a
cold, unattractive antiquarian painter by his
rare keen sense of beauty, and here again we
come in contact with the difficulty of ranging him