3-002-756 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Blind Beggar, 1856. Bathed in sunlight, an attractive young woman in Dutch country dress leans from an open window in one corner of a vine-covered cottage. She reaches out to drop coins in the hat of a young man outside her window, who is wearing a patched and dirty tunic. He is soliciting charity on behalf of an elderly woman, who waits beside him in a wheeled, hand-drawn conveyance. A glimpse of a distant landscape is visible over the brick wall to the right. Although Alma-Tadema was only 20 when he painted this scene, he already shows in it the narrative skills that will bring him such success with his later re-creations of life in Greek and Roman antiquity. This genre scene was the artist's first major commission.