"White Marble, Black Skin: Alma-Tadema and the Aesthetic of Cleanliness"

Joy Cador (Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University (HiCSA) and Sorbonne University (VALE), Focillon Fellow, will give a talk titled, "White Marble, Black Skin: Alma-Tadema and the Aesthetic of Cleanliness"

Dutch-born painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1913) was widely known for his depictions of immaculate white marble. While his work has long been considered through the lens of whiteness, it also includes the representation of non-White and non-Western subjects, which now calls for renewed scholarly attention.

Focusing on The Balneator, an understudied watercolour by Alma-Tadema, this talk examines how the painter questions the myth of a “white” Antiquity through the depiction of Egyptian and Roman subjects. The pervasive “aesthetic of whiteness” in Alma-Tadema’s work is also closely tied to his “soapy aesthetic,” which this essay reconsiders within the imperial and colonial context of nineteenth-century Great Britain.

Finally, this talk investigates the use of watercolour as a medium, understood as a double-edged tool: while it seems to participate in a project of “purification,” its use here simultaneously highlights visual resistance against the ideology of “whiteness.”