„Londyńska piękność”. Życie i twórczość brytyjskiej malarki Laury Alma-Tademy (1852–1909)

“London beauty”: Life and works of the British painter Laura Alma-Tadema (1852–1909) The article is an attempt to reconstruct the biography of the British painter Laura Alma-Tadema (1852–1909) on the basis of archival materials from the British press and period memoirs. The main aim of the article is to present the life and work of Laura Alma-Tadema as an example of one of the career paths that a woman artist from a wealthy British middle-class home could have chosen in a period when women fought for equality in many areas of life, including art. The profile of the now-forgotten artist, the wife of the esteemed British painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) and the stepmother of Laurence Alma-Tadema (1865–1940) – a writer who was actively involved in helping Poland and Poles during the World War I. The synthesis of the gathered information constitutes the most accurate biographical sketch of Laura Alma-Tadema to date. In addition to the history of her life and the characteristics of her artistic work, the article deals with the themes of the artistic milieu of Great Britain at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the antisuffragism movement as well as the situation and social position of female artists from the perspective of an upper-middle-class woman.