Sir Ernest Albert Waterlow (1850–1919), RA

Sir Ernest Albert Waterlow (1850–1919), RA, is a formal Royal Academy portrait of the British landscape painter who served as President of the Royal Watercolour Society and was a significant figure in Victorian landscape painting. Alma-Tadema, as a senior Royal Academician, moved in the same institutional circles as Waterlow and was occasionally called upon to paint portraits of prominent fellow artists. The Royal Academy of Arts holds this canvas, an appropriate institutional home for a portrait of one of its members. Alma-Tadema's approach to fellow-artist portraiture brought sensitivity to the sitter's professional identity and cultural standing, while his technical approach—trained on the precise rendering of material culture—served equally well for the physiognomic character of a contemporary professional portrait.

Oil on canvas with the formal requirements of institutional portraiture: dignified composition, carefully rendered face, professional attributes suggesting the sitter's identity as a painter. Alma-Tadema's characteristic light control serves the portraitist's primary task of revealing character through the face.