Page "Lawrence Alma-Tadema" Paragraph 3

Lawrence Alma-Tadema was born as Lourens Alma Tadema on 8 January 1836, in the small village of Dronrijp, in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands.

He was the sixth child of Pieter Jiltes Tadema ( 1797 – 1840 ), the village notary, who had had three sons by a previous marriage, and the third child of his mother, Hinke Dirks Brouwer ( c. 1800 – 1863 ).

Hinke Brouwer was the half sister of Pieter Tadema's first wife.

Her first child died early and the second was Atje ( c. 1834 – c. 1876 ), Laurence's sister, for whom he had great affection.

Tadema is an old Frisian patronymic ( meaning ' Adam-son ', the suffix ma being ' son of '), while the names Laurens and Alma came from his godfather.

Laurens would later adopt the more English Lawrence for his forename, and incorporate Alma into his surname so that he appeared at the beginning of exhibition catalogues, under " A " rather than under " T ".

He did not actually hyphenate his last name, but it was done by others and this has since become the convention.