Back in the old days before PC’s and VCR’s, before anyone had ever dreamed of DVD’s, before cell phones, and definitely before television, there were movies. And before movies, the main entertainment mediums were books and art and music. It was an age of mystery and things that were usually discussed in bed, or at least behind closed doors, maintained an aura of magic, or fantasy, or at minimum, a sense of romance.

I hear the breezes playing in the trees above

while all the world is saying you were meant for love.

Isn’t it romantic merely to be young on such a night as this?

Isn’t it romantic?

I first heard the words, Isn’t it Romantic as they were crooned on the soundtrack of a movie called The Day of the Locust.

I can tell you that Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart originally wrote the song in 1932 for a movie called Love Me Tonight. But Day of the Locust was a movie was about a starry eyed writer, who came to Hollywood in the 1930′s, filled with dreams, and romantic notions, only to find that the movie industry, in general, was a savage place. The real life writer was Nathaniel West, and it was his novel, The Day of the Locust, that had been adapted for this movie. West arrived with hope, found some success, then left after finding only a little glamor and lots of broken hearts and broken dreams. This movie was released in 1975.

Expectations by Lawrence Alma-Tadena

But life is a series of cycles, and events tend to repeat themselves. Let’s direct our focus backward to the 19th century and we will find an earlier version of Nathaniel West, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, whose self-portrait is below.

His time-line was seventy-five years ahead of Nathaniel West’s. Lawrence lived from 1836 until 1912. He was a Dutch ex-pat who was hailed as a brilliant artist by the Victorian Era London Society. He enjoyed the dizzying heights of adulation and success: his friends included the Prince of Wales and a young Winston Churchill.

A Coign of Vantage

Caracalla and Geta

A Reading From Homer

His works are worthy of more than a brief look as they truly are romantic. Applying a modern spin to the titles, Caracalla and Geta might be called ‘A Day at the Stadium’, A Reading From Homer and Sappho and Alcaeus are just older versions of ‘A Rock Star and His Groupies’.

Sappho and Alcaeus

Yes, the public ate up his artistic portrayals of languid and beautiful men and women posed against white marble in dazzling sunlight. And look at how he portrayed social events like a pair of girls reading a poem. The Favorite Poet is below.

Or another pair of girls both waiting for the same man in Unconscious Rivals above. Wasn’t it a romantic time?

In those days people got down and partied as well as we do these days. Check out The Roses of Heliogabalus above, and The Vintage Festival below.

But the Victorian Era ultimately ended and with it, so ended Alma-Tadema’s marketability, his fame, as well as his entre into the upper echelons of London society. The appetites of the public changed, as did the attitudes of the artists. People no longer accepted visions of romance and of beauty from bygone times. Reality reared it ugly head. Lawrence Alma-Tadema faded into obscurity.

I’d like to see something like Alma-Tadema’s art in today’s videos. Wouldn’t his imagery make for sensational introductions to videos? The Women of Amphissa (above) is just stunning. It’s really just a group of women out shopping at the mall isn’t it? But whenever you talk about romance, you’ve got to have men and women, and at least some attraction. And if the weather lends a hand like in Under The Blue Ionian Weather, (below) well..wouldn’t it be ever so romantic?

And that ends today’s Art Lecture. If you’d like to view some images that are definitely not as romantic as Alma-Tadema’s art, but will make you quickly think of getting your tail down to a beach somewhere to relax and view lots of women in bikinis, and you can’t get there – then just visit our pages as often as possible and we will show you some of the world’s best looking women. And you just might find just what you want without getting even a single grain of sand in those hard to reach places.

This article was originally published in Also on Video on September 3rd, 2000. It has been updated for publication in JustMeMike’s New Also on Video on September 9th, 2007.