LONDON.- The National Gallery has secured a masterpiece by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, After the Audience, from the noted Pre-Raphaelite collector, Isabel Goldsmith, in negotiations brokered by Christie’s Private Sales.

This tour de force by Alma-Tadema impresses in its depiction of the pomp and majesty of Ancient Rome, and dazzles in its technical brilliance. Agrippa, son in law of the Emperor Augustus, mounts the stairs of his villa after receiving petitioners from all corners of the Empire. Their gifts to him are laid out in the foreground. The picture is a masterly progression of light and shade and astounds in the brilliant depiction of marble.

William Armstrong, a wealthy manufacturer who built Cragside in Northumberland (now a National Trust property) had seen its pendant in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1876 (An Audience at Agrippa’s, now at The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock) depicting the senator descending his staircase and requested a work by Alma-Tadema who for the commission choose to show the conclusion of the scene. Armstrong did not end up buying the picture. It was sold by Christie’s in 1947 for 90 Guineas. Since then, it has featured in the two most recent exhibitions of the artist’s work at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and Leighton House Museum in London.