Laura, Lady Alma-Tadema

Bastien-Lepage painted this portrait of Laura Theresa Epps, wife of the Dutch-born painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, in 1879 during the height of his Parisian fame. Laura Alma-Tadema was herself a skilled painter who exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy in London, and the work therefore represents an exchange between two professional artistic households rather than a straightforward commissioned likeness. Bastien-Lepage had by this time largely abandoned the academic smoothness of his early career in favour of the plein-air Naturalism for which he became celebrated, and this portrait shows that transition clearly. The Ashmolean Museum's holding of the work in Oxford connects it to the substantial British admiration Bastien-Lepage enjoyed in the late 1870s and 1880s, when young British painters including John Singer Sargent and Walter Sickert looked to him as a model for combining rigorous drawing with atmospheric outdoor light. Laura's pose is informal compared to official portraits of the era, suggesting the ease of two painters in conversation rather than the distance of patron and hired hand. The work was painted during Bastien-Lepage's most productive and internationally celebrated period.

Bastien-Lepage employs his characteristic combination of precise linear drawing in the face with looser, more atmospheric handling in the dress and background. The palette is cool and silvery, with grey and blue tones predominating. The brushwork in the background loosens considerably to suggest light and air.