Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema
British artist (1852–1909)
Laura Theresa, Lady Alma-Tadema (née Epps; 16 April 1852 – 15 August 1909) was a British painter specialising in domestic and genre scenes of women and children. Eighteen of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her husband, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was one of the most prominent Victorian painters.
Life
A daughter of Dr. George Napoleon Epps (who was brother of Dr. John Epps), she had two sisters who were also painters (Emily studied under John Brett, a Pre-Raphaelite, and Ellen under Ford Madox Brown), while Edmund Gosse and a stockbroker, Rowland Hill, were her brothers-in-law.
It was at Madox Brown's home that Alma-Tadema first met her in December 1869, when she was aged 17 and he was 33. (His first wife had died in May that year.) He fell in love at first sight, and so it was partly her presence in London (and partly the fact that only in England had his work consistently sold) that influenced him into relocating to England rather than elsewhere when forced to leave the continent by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870.
Arriving in London at the beginning of September 1870 with his small daughters and sister Artje, Alma-Tadema wasted no time in contacting Epps, and it was arranged that he would give her painting lessons. During one of these, he proposed marriage.
“Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema” enters the record as british artist (1852–1909). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Laura, Theresa and Alma-Tadema can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q459611. VIAF identifies the subject as 74638589. The Library of Congress control number is nr94021537. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1852, 1909, 1869 and 1870.
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This entry incorporates text from “Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.