''Spring'' is an 1894 oil-on-canvas painting by the Anglo-Dutch artist
Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema ( ; born Lourens Alma Tadema, ; 8 January 1836 – 25 June 1912) was a Dutch people, Dutch painter who later settled in the United Kingdom, becoming the last officially recognised Denization, denizen in 1873. Born in ...
, which has been in the collection of the
J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
,
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, since 1972. The painting relates the Victorian custom of children collecting flowers on
May Day
May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the Northern Hemisphere's March equinox, spring equinox and midsummer June solstice, solstice. Festivities ma ...
back to an Ancient Roman spring festival, perhaps
Cerealia or
Floralia
The Floralia was a Roman festival, festival of Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion in honor of the Flora (mythology), goddess Flora, held on 27 April during the Roman Republic, Republican era, or 28 April in the Julian calendar. The ...
or
Ambarvalia
Ambarvalia was a Roman agricultural fertility rite, involving animal sacrifices and held on 29 May in honor of Ceres, Bacchus and Dea Dia. However, the exact timing could vary since Ambarvalia was a "fariae conceptivae" - a festival not bound ...
, although the details depicted in the painting do not correspond to any single Roman festival. It was the inspiration for the scene of Julius Caesar's triumphal entry into Rome in the 1934 film ''
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...
''.
Description
The tall, narrow painting depicts a procession of women and children along a Roman street and down some marble steps. Spectators cheer from the classical buildings of polychrome marble to either side, some throwing down flowers. The participants in the procession are garlanded with bright flowers, with some also bearing baskets of flowers or branches of blossom, and other playing musical instruments: a flute, pan pipes, and tambourines. The choice of flowers in the painting seems to be driven more by aesthetic and colour considerations than the symbolic meanings of the Victorian
language of flowers.

Towards the rear of the procession is a bearded priest holding a metal jug, with other attendants carrying a casket, a torch, and a large portable ivory altar which is emerging from the building to the right. Other attendants bear two silver sculptures of a horned
satyr
In Greek mythology, a satyr (, ), also known as a silenus or ''silenos'' ( ), and sileni (plural), is a male List of nature deities, nature spirit with ears and a tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exaggerated erection. ...
with a child and fruit, and two more hold poles with a banner slung between, bearing a Latin fragment (then attributed to
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; ), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexual themes.
Life
...
, known as Carmina Catulli 8): "Hunc lucum tibi dedico consecroque, Priape / qua domus tua Lampsacist quaque silva, Priape/ nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora / Hellespontia ceteris ostreosior oris" (loosely translated: "This enclosure I dedicate and consecrate to thee,
Priapus / At
Lampsacus
Lampsacus (; ) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek city located in modern day Turkey, strategically situated on the eastern side of the Hellespont in the northern Troad. An inhabitant of Lampsacus was called a Lampsacene. The name has been trans ...
where is thy home and sacred grove, Priapus / For thee specially in its coastal cities are you worshipped / Of
Hellespont
The Dardanelles ( ; ; ), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli (after the Gallipoli peninsula) and in classical antiquity as the Hellespont ( ; ), is a narrow, natural strait and internationally significant waterway in northwestern Turkey t ...
more abundant in oysters than all other coasts").
Many of the participants and spectators were modelled by Alma-Tadema's friends or members of his family.
[Swanson, ''Alma-Tadema'', p. 130] They include the bearded composer
George Henschel and his daughter Helen, high on a balcony to the right. A bearded bust to the lower left may be a self-portrait of Alma-Tadema, beside the base of a column where the painting is signed and numbered: " L Alma Tadema Op CCCXXVI".
The surrounding scene is an architectural
capriccio, not a single known location but rather combining parts of known Roman buildings from several different locations=. To the left rear is a
triumphal arch
A triumphal arch is a free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road, and usually standing alone, unconnected to other buildings. In its simplest form, a triumphal ...
, with an inscription taken from the
Arch of Trajan at
Benevento
Benevento ( ; , ; ) is a city and (municipality) of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill above sea level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino (or Beneventano) and the Sabato (r ...
, southeast of Rome; its
spandrel
A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...
is decorated with a
river god based on the
Arch of Constantine, but unusually accompanied by a sheep and bull (for
Aries and
Taurus, denoting April and May). A building to the left has a frieze showing the battle of
Lapiths
The Lapiths (; , ''Lapithai'', Grammatical number, sing. Λαπίθης) were a group of legendary people in Greek mythology, who lived in Thessaly in the valley of the Pineios (Thessaly), Pineios and on the mountain Pelion. They were believed to ...
and
Centaurs
A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version o ...
. Visible to the rear are two bronze
equestrian statue
An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin ''eques'', meaning 'knight', deriving from ''equus'', meaning 'horse'. A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an equine statue. A full-sized equestrian statue is a ...
s, based on marble statues from
Pompeii
Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...
.
The painting measures and retains its original, heavy gilded architectural frame, also designed by the artist, with pilasters and a triangular pediment. The frame above the painting displays its title, "Spring", and the bottom of the frame has four lines of poetry from
Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1865 poem "Dedication" written in honour of the painter
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August 183317 June 1898) was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter.
Burne-Jones worked with William Morris as a founding part ...
: "In a land of clear colours and stories, / In a region of shadowless hours, / Where earth has a garment of glories / And a murmur of musical flowers".
Reception
Alma-Tadema worked on the painting for four years. It was completed in late 1894, and bought by the German banker . It was exhibited at the 1895
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the months of June, July, and August. The exhibition includes paintings, prints, drawings, sc ...
, at the 1899
Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in Berlin, and at the 1900
Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was a commercial success for Alma-Tadema, who sold many reproductions.
The original painting was sold through
Thomas Agnew & Sons in London, and acquired by
Charles Yerkes in 1901. After his death in 1910, it was sold at the
American Art Association, and then bought in 1912 from the dealer Henry Reinhardt Galleries in Chicago by
Thomas F. Cole. It was exhibited at the inaugural exhibition at the new building of the
Toledo Museum of Art in 1912, and later acquired by Edwin H. Fricke. It was the inspiration for the scene of
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...
's
triumphal entry into Rome in
Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 film ''
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...
''.
Along with other works from Fricke's collection, including Alma-Tadema's 1906 painting ''Ask Me No More'', it was sold at
Parke-Bernet in New York in 1945. It was acquired through Lewis A. Stone by Mrs. Edward Lane, and sold the same year to
Hulett C. Merritt, in
Pasadena. It was bought from his estate sale at Ames Art Galleries in 1956 by Victor Emmanuel Wenzel von Metternich, and acquired from his estate sale at
Sotheby's
Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
in Los Angeles in 1972 by the
J. Paul Getty Museum.
References
''Spring'' Getty Museum
''Spring'', Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1894 Google Arts & Culpture
*
Spring', thehistoryofart.org
''Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring'' Getty Museum Studies in Art, Louise Lippincott, Getty Publications, 1991
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spring
1894 paintings
Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Musical instruments in art
Paintings of children
Oil on canvas paintings