Success often looks inevitable in the rearview mirror. When we look at Lawrence Alma-Tadema art today—those confident, expensive, masterful paintings of Roman luxury—we assume the artist was always a star.
He wasn't.
In 1864, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a 28-year-old widow's son living in Antwerp. He was doing okay locally, painting gloomy Merovingian history scenes. But on the world stage? He was a nobody.
And in the 19th century, there was only one stage that mattered: The Paris Salon.
The Super Bowl of Art
The Paris Salon was not just an exhibition. It was the center of the cultural universe.
Every year, thousands of artists submitted their work. Most were rejected. To be accepted was an honor. To win a medal was a life-changing event. It was the 19th-century equivalent of winning an Oscar and a Nobel Prize on the same night.
Lawrence decided to take a gamble. He crated up a painting titled Pastimes in Ancient Egypt and shipped it to Paris.
The Anxiety
Imagine the waiting. There were no telephones. No emails. Just weeks of silence while the jury deliberated in Paris.
Lawrence was anxious. His style was unusual. It wasn't the standard "Neoclassical" style (white statues, stiff poses). It was realistic. It was dusty. It showed Egyptians not as gods, but as people relaxing, drinking, and playing games.
Would the French critics get it? Or would they laugh him out of the room?
The Surprise
When the news finally arrived in Antwerp, Lawrence thought it was a mistake.
He hadn't just been accepted. He had won a Gold Medal.
It was a shock. The jury had fallen in love with the sheer technical innovation of Lawrence Alma-Tadema art. They had never seen antiquity painted with such believable, tangible texture. They loved that it felt real.
The Knock on the Door
But the medal was just a piece of metal. The real prize arrived in the form of a man named Ernest Gambart.
Gambart was the "Prince of Dealers." Based in London, he controlled the European art market. He was the man who had made Rosa Bonheur a global celebrity. He represented the Pre-Raphaelites like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. To be signed by Gambart was to be anointed as one of the greats.
Gambart had seen Pastimes in Paris. He was intrigued. He got on a train and rode north to Antwerp.
Legend has it that he knocked on Alma-Tadema's studio door unannounced.
"Are you the painter of the picture in the Salon?" Gambart asked. "Yes," Lawrence replied, probably trembling. "Do you have any others?"
Lawrence invited him in. The studio was full of unsold canvases. Gambart walked around, looking at them in silence. The tension must have been unbearable.
Finally, Gambart turned to him. "I will take them all."
The Contract
Gambart didn't just buy the inventory. He commissioned 24 more paintings on the spot. He offered Lawrence a contract that guaranteed him a massive income for years to come.
It was the moment everything changed.
In the span of a few weeks, Lawrence Alma-Tadema art went from being a local curiosity to an international commodity. Gambart would take these paintings and tour them around London, Brussels, and New York. He would sell engravings to the middle classes. He would make Lawrence a rich man.
The Lesson
The lesson of 1864 is that talent is not enough. You need courage.
Lawrence could have stayed safe in Antwerp. He could have kept painting for local patrons. But he took the risk. He sent his work to the toughest critics in the world.
That gamble paid off. It launched a career that would eventually lead to a knighthood, the Order of Merit, and a burial in St. Paul's Cathedral. But it all started with that one crate, shivering on a train to Paris.
