Bluebells by Sir Laurence Alma Tadema OM RA, 1836-1912. 1899 (the last painting completed by the artist). Oil laid down on panel. 8 3/4 by 14 in. (22.2 by 35.5 cm). Private Collection. Image originally downloaded by George Landow in 2006, from the Art Renewal Center, which now asks for the credit line: "Image provided courtesy of the Art Renewal Center©, ARC, www.artrenewal.org." Caption material and commentary added by Jacqueline Banerjee in 2025.
Bluebells are widely loved, and the way they thrive and spread in the shade to carpet woodland in the spring is perhaps universally admired. But here was an artist who really adored flowers. Tadema was hardly unique in this (think of Albert Moore and paintings like his Vase of Dahlias), but it was particularly appropriate that Tadema's last finished work should suggest their deep hold over him, and their special meaning for him. Louise Lippincott writes that his own garden, which he could access directly from his studio, was celebrated, and that he even wore flowers "when the occasion warranted, notably at costume parties, which he sometimes attended garbed in a toga and a wreath of bluebells” (43).
The flowers in this work are far more than accessories. Here too there is an association with classical times. The painting was sold by Sotheby's to a private collector, but a useful catalogue note remains on the auction site, explaining that it "dramatically describes a languid day spent by a Roman maiden. Clad in a loose lemon colored gown, she rests on a carpet of bluebells and deep grasses while a companion seems to drift among the tree trunks in the distance...." Like many Victorians, Tadema also found a deeper meaning in the flowers; they do not simply evoke springtimes past. As the catalogue note suggests, there is a mystic quality here that many might sense in our bluebell woods even today, "a dreamy quality — an effect heightened by local mythologies built around the mystical creatures populating such areas who respond to the 'ringing' of the bell-shaped buds by spiriting away those who crossed into the borders of these magic lands."
This is the background to another delightful artwork in a different medium — the sculptor Richard Westmacott, Jr's Bluebell, a relief in which a diminutive sprite sits in the curve of a bluebell's stem, sheltered by its nodding flowers and curving leaves. In Tadema's work, one feels that there might be many of these tiny beings in the sea of living blue, hidden from mortal sight....
Bibliography
Catalogue Note. Sotheby's. Web. 15 April 2025. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2006/19th-century-european-art-including-sporting-paintings-n08181/lot.9.html
Lippincott, Louise. Laurence Alma Tadema: Spring. Malibu, California: Getty Museum Studies on Art. Getty Museum Studies on Art, 1990.
Created 28 October 2006
Last Modified 16 April 2025