This summer, the Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza presents Alma-Tadema and Victorian Painting in the Pérez Simón Collection, an exhibition including some of the most emblematic artists of the English painting from the 19th century. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Frederic Leighton, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Albert J. Moore or John William Waterhouse cultivated in their works values that they had inherited in part from the pre-Raphaelites and that offered a strong contrast with the moralistic attitudes of that time: the return to the classical antiquity, the cult of feminine beauty and the search of visual harmony, all of it settled in sumptuous sceneries and with frequent references to medieval, Greek and Roman themes.
Organized by Véronique Gerard-Powell, honorary lecturer of the Université Paris-Sorbonne, the exhibition shows fifty works belonging to the Collection Pérez Simón, one of the most important of the world of Victorian painting, and it has already been shown in Paris and Rome before getting to Madrid, from where it will travel to London too. The exhibition will be organized around six theme subjects: Eclecticismo de una época; Belleza ideal, belleza clásica; Alma-Tadema, entre reconstrucción histórica y ensueño; El rostro, espejo de la belleza; Del prerrafaelismo al simbolismo y Entre tradición y modernidad. The exhibition will be shown until 5 October.
