Hopeful

1909

This small panel was painted for Queen Alexandra, wife of the British King Edward VII. A woman in a flowing white dress shields her gaze from the sunlight as she searches for a sign of her beloved. The arch of her arm rhymes with the rounded marble parapet nearby, which contains within it a sculpture of a curled-up dog, an animal that often appears in paintings as a symbol of fidelity.

Medium	oil on panel
Dimensions	13 3/8 x 5 7/16 in. (34 x 13.8 cm)
Object Number	1955.873
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	Off View

Image Caption

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Hopeful, 1909, oil on panel. Clark Art Institute, 1955.873

Select Bibliography

Lovett, Jennifer Gordon and William R. Johnston. Empires Restored, Elysium Revisited: The Art of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Exhibitionc catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1991. Dircks, Rudolph. "The Later Works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., R.W.S." Art Journal (Special issue, Christmas 1910). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Precht, Katherine. The Paintings of the English School at the Clark Art Institute. Honors thesis, Williams College, 1981. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Swanson, Vern G. The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. London: Garton & Co., 1990. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Executed for Queen Alexandra of England (from 1909); possibly M. Polak, London; sale, Christie’s, London, 24 Apr. 1936, no. 28; [possibly Vicars Brothers, London]; [N. Mitchell, London, sold to Clark, 23 Nov. 1937]; Robert Sterling Clark (1937–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.