Pine Trees in a Roman Park

This unfinished sketch is thought to depict the garden of the Villa Borghese in Rome, which Alma-Tadema painted while visiting the city with his family in 1876. Holes at each corner suggest the artist worked outside, with the canvas pinned to a board. The study was later mounted on plywood, perhaps by the artist’s daughter Anna, who wrote her father’s name and her own initials in the bottom right corner.

Image Caption

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pine Trees in a Roman Park, 1876, oil on canvas, mounted on panel. Clark Art Institute, gift of the Joseph F McCrindle Collection, 2009.12.1

Provenance

Estate of the artist; [James Coats Gallery, New York, by 1962];¹ sale, Sotheby’s, London, 22 July 1970, no. 322, as A Park in Rome, sold to Morgan; C. Morgan, New York (from 1970); sale, Sotheby’s, Belgravia, 25 July 1972, no. 139, sold to Sewell; [Brian Sewell, London, sold to McCrindle, 1973]; Joseph F. McCrindle, New York and London (1973–d. 2008); Joseph F. McCrindle Estate (2008–9, given to the Clark, as Study of a Garden); Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, 2009. 1. According to Vern Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1990, p. 188; however, in Robert Isaacson Gallery, 50th Anniversary of the Death of Sir LAwrence Alma-Tadema, 1962, no lender for the painting is identified.