DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.69400#0073
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 51
flowers figure as the very embodiment of the
summer of life and nature.
Indeed, so exquisitely, so superbly painted are
these flowers that in some of Alma Tadema’s
inor pictures they actually assume the upper
hand, though of course unconsciously to the
painter, and become the protagonists in the
composition. There is one picture which he
calls simply Oleanders, showing that he recog-
nized himself how the flowers had impressed
his imagination and gained precedence over the
human beings with whom they were associated.
Tadema’s flowers are very poems, and had he
painted nothing but these he would have been
a great artist.
It was of course inevitable that when he chose
Spring as his theme the composition should
be rich in the delineation of such blossoms.
In this picture all the perfumed profusion of a
southern May is summed up within the space of
one little canvas. A bevy of matrons, maidens
and children precedes what was probably an
ecclesiastical procession. They wend their way
through the marble-paved streets of Imperial
Rome to some temple shrine, therein to cele-
brate the rites of joy due to the newly awakened
flowers figure as the very embodiment of the
summer of life and nature.
Indeed, so exquisitely, so superbly painted are
these flowers that in some of Alma Tadema’s
inor pictures they actually assume the upper
hand, though of course unconsciously to the
painter, and become the protagonists in the
composition. There is one picture which he
calls simply Oleanders, showing that he recog-
nized himself how the flowers had impressed
his imagination and gained precedence over the
human beings with whom they were associated.
Tadema’s flowers are very poems, and had he
painted nothing but these he would have been
a great artist.
It was of course inevitable that when he chose
Spring as his theme the composition should
be rich in the delineation of such blossoms.
In this picture all the perfumed profusion of a
southern May is summed up within the space of
one little canvas. A bevy of matrons, maidens
and children precedes what was probably an
ecclesiastical procession. They wend their way
through the marble-paved streets of Imperial
Rome to some temple shrine, therein to cele-
brate the rites of joy due to the newly awakened