Artist:

JAMES ARCHER RSA (1823-1904)

Title:

Battle of Centaurs ( 1891 )

Medium:

Oil on panel

Signed:

Signed with monogram and dated 1891 lower right

Dimensions:

12.50cm wide   81.00cm high (4.92 inches wide  31.89 inches high)

Provenance:

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., London (until 1912);
His estate sale, The well-known and interesting collection of Antique Furniture and Objets d'Art, Hampton and Sons, 9th-13th and 16th June, 1913, lot 607; to:
A. P. Mason, Esq., MBE, J.P;
His sale, Sotheby's, Belgravia, Nov. 5, 1974, lot 67;
Sotheby's Belgravia, June 29, 1976, lot 92;
Roy Miles, London;
Private Collection, New York; to 2003

Literature:

Hampton and Sons, Catalogue of the well known and interesting collection of Antique Furniture and Objets d'Art, 9th-13th and 16th June, 1913
Rudolph de Cordova, The Panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Hall, The Strand Magazine, volume XXIV, December 1902, number 144, illustrated page 629
Percy Cross Standing, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M, R.A, 1906
Sotheby's Belgravia, Catalogue of Fine Victorian Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, London, Tuesday, 5th November 1974, lot 67, illustrated

Description:

Alma-Tadema’s house at 17 (now 44) Grove End Road, St John’s Wood, was regarded as one of the wonders of the age and featured in numerous contemporary books and periodicals. The extraordinary mixture of decorations and objets d’art from Ancient Rome, Medieval Holland and Japan, and such costly embellishments as a solid brass staircase and an aluminium dome ceiling (when aluminium was used chiefly in the manufacture of jewellery) were striking enough, but Tadema also had a picture gallery which included examples of the work of most of the leading artists of his day.

Battle of the Centaurs was a gift from James Archer, who had moved to London from Edinburgh in 1862. It formed part of the collection of forty-five panels painted by artist-friends for the hall at Grove End Road. All the panels were presents and were painted to a uniform length of 31 ½ inches. Each image represents a typical example of the style and subject matter of its creator. Although undated, they span from the time of Tadema’s occupation of the house (which he had purchased from James Tissot) in 1886 to a few years before his death in 1912.

The fact that they were regarded with some considerable interest in their day can be judged by the frequent references to them in many leading books and magazines. Cosmo Monkhouse (1), in discussing the house, refers to the panels as “its most remarkable feature”, while F. G. Stephens (2) describes them as “substantial visiting-cards... charming pictures which fill panels in the unique entrance hall of that delightful house". Rudolph de Cordova in the Strand Magazine devotes a full fifteen illustrated pages to a description of the panels.(3)


1. Cosmo Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists,1899,page 225.
2. F. G. Stephens, Lawrence Alma Tadema, R.A., 1895, pages 15-16.
3. Rudolph de Cordova, The Panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Hall, The Strand Magazine, volume XXIV, December 1902, number 144

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