This picture shows a tragic moment from another stormy period in Egyptian history, described in the book of Exodus. God sent nine plagues to Egypt as retaliation for not letting the Jews leave the country, but the Pharaoh still wasn’t listening. Then God enforced his ultimate plague: the death of the firstborn. This affected the Pharaoh personally, and when his eldest son died, he finally decided to set the Jewish people free.
The painting shows the intensely dramatic scene: the defeated monarch, mourning over the dead son lying on his lap. It was created by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912), a typically Victorian artist who specialized in painting scenes from Antiquity. He was obsessed by the idea of making his depictions of ancient civilizations as authentic as possible. To achieve this, he only used objects that he had seen in archeological books or observed carefully in the British Museum. Everything had to be historically correct: for this painting, for example, Alma-Tadema only used artifacts dating from the thirteenth century BC, as in those days they were convinced the event took place during this period.
Sir Lawrence was not as British as you might think. He was born Lourens Alma Tadema in Friesland, a Dutch northern province. He was trained as an artist in the Netherlands and Belgium, but left for England in December 1869, never to return. He settled successfully into London’s high society, socially as well as artistically. Alma-Tadema was respected as an important artist, but also known as a graceful gentleman and bon vivant. He anglicized his name from Lourens to Lawrence and incorporated his middle name Alma into his surname, in order to be filed under ‘A’ in exhibition catalogues.
His great international fame contrasted with the low appreciation in his mother country. Nevertheless, Alma-Tadema decided that at least one of his masterpieces should be part of an important Dutch collection. Therefore, the artist bequeathed this beautiful canvas, the one he never wanted to sell and that he used to show proudly to his visitors, to the Rijksmuseum.
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