An Egyptian in a Doorway

Alma-Tadema painted a variety of themes set in ancient Egypt in the mid-1860s, in which he used impressive archaeological precision and uncanny lifelikeness to bring the distant past to life. This style was similar to that of Orientalist artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, who specialised in pictures of both modern and historical life in the Middle East. Alma-Tadema would go on to specialise in sequences set in ancient Rome later in his career.