SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA, O.M., R.A. | THE EMBARKATION ON THE BARGE

James Coats, New York (by 1962)

Sale: Sotheby’s, London, May 20, 1970, lot 68 (as Preparing for a River Trip) 

P. & D. Colnaghi, London (acquired at the above sale)

Rowland, Browse and Delbanco, London (by 1972)

Schweitzer Galleries, New York (by 1973)

Sale: Christie's, London, October 21, 1977, lot 150, illustrated (as Classical Figures Mooring a Barge) 

Schweitzer Galleries, New York 

Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, October 31, 1985, lot 68, illustrated (as Preparing the Barge)

Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold, Sotheby's, New York, March 18, 1998, lot 378A, illustrated) 

Acquired at the above sale

Vern G. Swanson, Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World, London, 1977, p. 8, illustrated

Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 173, no. 161, illustrated pp. 50, 348

The Embarkation on the Barge is an unfinished oil study dated circa 1868-74. According to Vern Swanson, this work could be related to Alma-Tadema’s Spelevaren (1868, The Mesdag Collection, The Hague), which depicts a classical woman descending a set of stairs to board a barge, prepared for her by an attendant. The present lot can be seen on an easel in a black and white photograph of the artist in his studio when he was around the age of thirty-five (fig. 1).