The Closing Door, Anna Alma-Tadema, watercolor and gouache, roughly 21 x 14 in. (52 x 35 cm). Hyperlink is to earlier sale on Christie’s; I don’t know the present location of the unique.
Anna Alma-Tadema is usually (if not all the time) overshadowed by the status of her extra well-known father, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and unjustly so. The youthful Alma-Tadema is a watercolorist with a excessive diploma of ability and creative sensibility.
On this scene, she creates an emotional second that requires us to look intently into the portray to understand its depth. As the girl clutches each at her gown and at her necklace — her upturned face half vacant, half distressed — the shadowed door behind her is being pulled closed by a determine whose presence we solely encounter by barely observed palms on the door.
Rejection? The tip of a love affair? Maybe the flowers and writing supplies on the deak give us further clues. We’re left to compose our personal story across the scene, however the sense of strained emotion is palpable.
Alma-Tadema’s different topics had been usually room interiors, during which her eye for element, floor texture and the refined play of sunshine had been masterfully recommended in painstaking watercolor method. Right here, these abilities supply a composed, elaborate setting for the second — by no means distracting, however there for our visible pleasure as our eye travels to soak up your entire scene.
