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48
POMONA FESTIVAL
1879
SIR
LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, O.M., R.A.
1836 - 1912
Oil
on panel, 31 x 52 (12.25 x 20.5)
Signed
and inscribed, L. ALMA-TADEMA, Opus CXCVIII (above centre-left,
towards the top of the wall).
Provenance:
commissioned by Pilgeram and Lefevre, London, in 1879; sold
13 March 1879, bought Agnew; William Imrie, sale Christie's
28 June 1907 (110) bought Gooden and Fox for 600 gns.; Sir
Carl Meyer, sale Christie's 5 June 1930, bought Vickers for
85 gns.; Cecil French.
Exhibited:
Royal Academy, 1879 (351); Manchester, Royal Jubilee Exhibition,
1887 (314); London, Japan-British Exhibition, 1910 (456).
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1911 (75); Royal Academy,
Winter Exhibition, 1913 (12); Liverpool, Walker Art
Gallery, 1913 (1037).
Literature:
Illustrated London News, 3 May 1879, p.414; H.Zimmer-n, Lawrence
Alma-Tadema, Art Journal, 1886, pp.15, 22; G.H.Shepherd,
A short history of The British School of Painting,
1891 (4th ed.) p.99; R.Dircks, The Later Works of Sir Lawrence
Alma-Tadema, Art Journal, 1910, p.30; V.G.Swanson,
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The painter of the Victorian vision
of the Ancient world, 1977, p.138; V.G.Swanson, Sir
Lawrence Alma-Tadema: Catalogue Raisonné, 1990,
p.205.
A
group of classically dressed men, women and a young girl,
hands linked, dance around a blossoming apple tree on which
a votive picture has been hung. Incense rises from an elaborate
brazier before the tree. A bearded priest sits at the background,
right, partly obscured by two wreathed musicians accompanying
the dance on their pipes. The scene is set before a wall with
Pompeian decoration. Swanson (above) identifies the bearded
priest as a self-portrait.
Pomona
was the Roman goddess of fruits, particularly, like apples,
ones that grow on trees. Her flamen (priest) was of the lowest
rank as she herself was of minor importance in the hierarchy
of deities. Her sacred place was near Rome but she had no
specific festival day.
Painted in the year in which Alma-Tadema was elected R.A.,
Pomona Festival is one of twenty-four of his paintings
which may be described as Bacchanalian. As Swanson observes,
it is surprisingly exuberant for Alma-Tadema who normally,
as in The Vintage Festival, 1870, in the Kunsthalle,
Hamburg, invests even the most bucolic occasions with a degree
of staidness. The setting of the action before a decorated
wall is a device he had previously used in Une Fete Intime,
1871 (42.1 x 82.5), whereabouts unknown. Being a stickler
for archaeological accuracy Alma-Tadema had made studies of
Roman wall-painting during his Italian visit of 1875.
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