Alma-Tadema and his Silver Favourites

I have now seen the original after having had this poster stuck on various walls in various houses I have lived in over the last 15 years or so.

I was wandering about in the Manchester Art Gallery and simply happy to be warm and dry and not hauling about my luggage about as I got lost looking for hip quarters to spend my money.

I was in the Pre-Raphaelites section, gazing over the odd Rosetti and the superb collection of William Morgan pottery from the Arts and Crafts Movement when out of the corner of my eye I recognised 2 pieces - side by side - so vividly, that I gasped loudly.

I stood very still in the middle of the room, as if any movement of mine might frighten the pair off and I would never see them again. Heart beating unnaturally fast I backed away from the paintings to view my original target of yet more luminous Morgan pottery. I did my best to look at the pieces of metallic finished display pieces but the whole time I was greedily eyeing off the girls in the corner, making sure my gut reaction was correct.

Alma-Tadema - unmistakeably so and pictured above.

The second painting was the fall of Eve, painted in the typical Pre-Raphaelite style and I'd always mistakenly thought it to be a Rosetti. Eve with golden-red hair under the fruitful and forbidden tree looks off impassively and glazedly as a serpent with a wicked man's head blows evil air into her ear. This picture had been in a Christina Rosetti poetry book I had treasured as a typically angsty teen.

I lost all sense of time as I stood in front of those two paintings looking at the brush-stokes, reading the notes, soaking in the awe of beauty. The A-T was surprisingly small and Eve was surprisingly large but side by side - was truly shocking for me.

I've since learnt that Manchester is famed for its P-R paintings and I was so lucky to chance upon it! Immediately after this religious experience I trotted along to the gallery gift shop and bought postcards to decorate my flat - Waterhouse, Rosetti, Alma-Tadema, Lowry, Modigliani, Millais, Burne-Jones and Madox Brown... Ahhh!

Plans to visit Birmingham in a week or two to see their P-R collection!