A Favourite Custom
Sir Laurence Alma Tadema OM RA, 1836-1912
1909?
Oil on wood
660 x 451 mm
Collection: Tate Britain N02675
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1909
According to the museum website, “this scene is set in the baths at Pompeii. In the foreground one woman playfully splashes another bathing in the ‘frigidarium’, a cold bath. The artist based this work on photographs of the ruins of the Stabian baths, revealed by archaeologists in 1824. He has made them more luxurious by adding a marble floor and walls which would more usually have been found in larger imperial baths.”
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