Master Art

Part of a group of studies of drapery, male nudes and Egyptian costumes by Alma-Tadema, all apparently taken from an early sketchbook, have been dated to c.1857-1858, when the young artist was living and working in Antwerp as a studio assistant to Louis de Taeye. A number of the drawings in this group of drapery studies are clearly inscribed as preparatory studies for a painting called The Contrary Oracle, which either no longer exists, or never progressed beyond a preliminary stage. Almost nothing is known of this now-lost painting, although two pencil sketches for the composition – a large sheet showing a group of figures within a great hall, and another drawing, inscribed ‘for The contrary oracle’, depicting part of the architectural background - were part of the same sketchbook and shared the same Gosse provenance as the present group of drawings.