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PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

BRITISH, 1836-1912
AT APHRODITE'S CRADLE (THE EVER-NEW HORIZON)

measurements
19 1/2 by 15 in.

alternate measurements
49.6 by 38 cm

signed L. Alma Tadema Op. CCCLXXXIX (lower left)

oil on panel

We would like to thank Vern Swanson, Director of the Springville Museum of Art, Utah, for confirming the authenticity of this work and for providing additional catalogue information.

PROVENANCE

Thomas Agnew & Sons, London (November 16, 1908, commissioned from the artist and reworked from the original composition of October 27, 1903)
Eugene Cremetti, London (purchased June 27, 1917)
Sale: Christie's, London, February 27, 1920, lot 132
W.W. Sampson (acquired at the above sale)
Milton Holland, Los Angeles
Fred Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco (acquired March on 9, 1965)
Private Collector (acquired from the above on October 31, 1966 and sold: Christie's, New York, May 25, 1995, lot 96, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, April 12-June, 1907, no. 6
London, Thomas Agnew & Sons, Annual Exhibition of Modern Pictures, 1909, no. 65

LITERATURE

Rudolf Dircks, "The Later Works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema O. M., R.A., R.W.S.", Art Journal, supplementary monograph, Christmas issue, 1910, pp. 22, 32
Vern G. Swanson, Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World, London, 1977, no. 30, illustrated
Russell Ash, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, New York, 1989, p. 8, illustrated
Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, pp. 271 and 481, no. 420, illustrated

NOTE

According to Vern Swanson, the title of the present work is taken from a verse of Horace's Odes (I:30):

O Aphrodite, daughter of the sea, come to me
Accompanied by your fervent son and the Graces,
without waistband, and the goddess of youth, who
without you has no charms, and don't forget to bring Mercury.

Alma-Tadema was a scholar of antiquity, and beyond his fervent collecting of artifacts, engravings and photographs of the archaeological discoveries of the day, he also contributed to the scholarly debates in the field. He labored to illustrate the works of Plutarch, Homer and Horace with works which used visually accurate details from antiquity while superimposing figures to which his modern audience could relate. The five women in the present work certainly elicit sympathy and admiration from the viewer, and their crowded positioning within the picture plane creates a dynamic composition, while showing their considerable beauty to maximum advantage.

This dramatic picture represents the artist's third version of the subject-- the first being The Coign of Vantage, 1895, in the collection of the Getty Museum, Malibu, California. That work included an expanded version of the marble parapet--the coign--with the figure of a bronze lioness resting at the end of the ledge the women lean upon. The scholar Frederic Bastet identified the statue as a "free copy" of an Egyptian sphinx from the Villa San Michelle in Capri (Elizabeth Prettejohn, et al, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, exh. cat., New York, 1996, p. 256). Aphrodite's Cradle leaves the sculpture out entirely, and the coign is made narrower, allowing a larger view of the vibrant sea. The earlier work also shows two large sailing ships at lower left, while Aphrodite's Cradle heightens the tension by leaving the maidens--and the viewer-- in tantalizing suspense about the fate of the men they await. Still, their location seems to be Capri, overlooking the Bay of Naples, where palatial villas have looked out over the sea since Roman times, most famously at the 'villa maritima' of Emperor Tiberius.

The present work was the final version of the subject commissioned by Agnew to reinterpret the incredibly popular theme of The Coign of Vantage, which left England for the United States shortly after its exhibition. The 1903 Ever New Horizon was the second of the three versions, and included only three women and a much more somber feeling. Indeed, Aphrodite's Cradle seems the most resolved of all three compositions, daringly cropping the image to isolate the women, adding a feeling of dizzying height to their terrace, and taking as its centerpiece the bright yellow blossom held by the nearest maiden, which seems to stand at the same rapt attention as the women. The women's positions echo each other, and their intense posture and the visually arresting screen created by the farthest woman's green headscarf brings the focus back to the seemingly endless horizon they so eagerly scan.

The women's anxious mood accompanies Horace's verses, which refer to the offering the women would have made to Aphrodite on behalf of their husbands and lovers, off at war, at the mercy of both the whim of the capricious gods as well as the churning sea. Aphrodite was reputedly born from the foam of the waves, which serve here as an effective backdrop in this glorious reworking of one of Alma Tadema's best loved themes.