Woman and Flowers

In 1872 Boston had founded an art museum but had not yet opened one. The Museum of Fine Arts was incorporated in 1870 and only opened its doors in 1876, so when the merchant Thomas Wigglesworth wanted to show this small panel, he lent it to the Boston Athenaeum, a private library that also held art exhibitions. It hung there as The Roman Lady. Alma-Tadema had painted it in 1868, while he was still living in Brussels, and signed and dated it on the edge of the table. The woman in classical dress leans on a bronze table modelled on a Pompeian original that survives in the archaeological museum in Naples, and the flowers, jewellery and fabrics around her are painted with the same close attention. The panel stayed in Wigglesworth's family for almost 70 years, passing to his niece and then to her son, Edward Jackson Holmes. By the time he gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1941, Holmes was the museum's president.