This is Our Corner

This is Our Corner (1873) depicts two figures—likely women—claiming a private space within a larger architectural setting, the intimate possessive phrase of the title suggesting an established refuge from the social world beyond. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds this panel, an unusual institutional home that reflects the Dutch connection: Alma-Tadema was Dutch-born and maintained professional and cultural connections to the Netherlands throughout his London career. By 1873 he was producing some of his most technically accomplished small-scale works, and the intimate domestic genre subject suited the panel format. The 'corner' as a claimed space of private companionship or individual withdrawal appears in Victorian literary and visual culture as a locus of protected intimacy—the social world's demands temporarily suspended in a small claimed territory of one's own.

Oil on panel with the intimate compositional focus on two figures in close spatial relationship. The corner setting—defined by intersecting architectural elements—creates a naturally bounded pictorial space that matches the subject's thematic concern with private claiming of domestic territory. Alma-Tadema's characteristic light effects within this sheltered space would convey warmth and enclosure.