Most people live in a house. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema lived in a painting.
When he moved to 44 Grove End Road in London's St John's Wood in 1886, he didn't just decorate it. He transformed it into a masterpiece as meticulously crafted as any of his canvases. It became known simply as "Casa Tadema," and it was the marvel of Victorian London.
To visit it was to step out of the smog of the industrial city and into a dream of the ancient Mediterranean.
The Entrance: The Golden Staircase
The experience began the moment you walked through the door.
Visitors were greeted not by a hallway, but by a staircase made of burnished brass. It glowed like solid gold. It wasn't just a way to get to the second floor; it was a psychological transition. As you climbed, the metal reflected the light, disorienting you, cleansing your palate of the gray London streets.
You were ascending into Olympus.
The Studio that Was a Temple
At the top of the stairs, you entered the heart of the house: The Studio.
It was immense. It looked more like a Roman basilica than a workspace. It had a vaulted ceiling three stories high. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema had installed a semi-circular apse at one end, lined with aluminum—a metal that was incredibly rare and expensive at the time.
Why aluminum? Because it reflected a cool, silvery light.
Tadema was obsessed with light. He didn't want the warm, yellow light of gold; he wanted the fierce, white light of the Mediterranean noon. The aluminum ceiling acted as a giant reflector, bathing his models in a light that shouldn't have existed in England.
The floor was parquet, polished to a mirror shine. There were marble benches imported from Italy. There were leopard skins thrown casually over chairs. Every direction you looked was a potential painting.
The Hall of Panels
But the magic wasn't just in the architecture; it was in the details. One of the most intimate features of the house was the "Hall of Panels."
This was a long, narrow room that served as a gallery of friendship. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema had a tradition: whenever a fellow artist visited, they would paint a small, vertical panel to be set into the wainscoting of the room.
It was a collaborative masterpiece. John Singer Sargent painted a panel. Lord Leighton painted one. The walls became a Who's Who of Victorian art. It was a physical manifestation of his belief that art should not be separated from daily life. In Casa Tadema, you didn't just visit an art gallery; you lived inside one.
The Garden of Silence
Outside, the fantasy continued.
The garden was designed to mimic a Roman villa. It had a colonnade of Ionic columns. It had a rectangular pool stocked with goldfish.
But the most famous feature was the roses. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema loved roses. He would have hampers of fresh blooms shipped from the French Riviera by train every week so he could paint them while they were still dewy. The scent of the house was a mix of oil paint, turpentine, and thousands of dying flowers.
The Party of the Century
The house wasn't just a studio; it was a stage.
The weekly soirées hosted by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema and his wife Laura were legendary. The guest lists read like a history book of the 19th century. Writers like Oscar Wilde, actors like Ellen Terry, and musicians like Paderewski mingled in the golden light.
Imagine the scene: It is a Tuesday evening. The air is thick with cigar smoke and rose perfume. A young Winston Churchill is arguing about politics in the corner. Someone is playing the piano in the aluminum apse. And in the center of it all is Lawrence—portly, bearded, laughing loudly, playing the role of the jovial Roman emperor.
A Legacy in Brick and Paint
Tragically, the house as he knew it is gone. After his death in 1912, the contents were auctioned off. The brass staircase was dismantled. The aluminum ceiling was removed. The magic was stripped away.
But looking at descriptions of the house explains the man. Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema was not content to just observe history; he wanted to inhabit it. He proved that art isn't just something you hang on a wall. It is a way of living.
Today, when we look at his paintings, we are looking at snapshots of this lost house. We are peering through the windows of Casa Tadema, seeing the dream that a Dutch boy built to keep the modern world at bay.
