A Question: The Idyl of a Picture by His Friend Alma Tadema

Georg Ebers is an artist who famously painted a series of idyllic landscapes. His friend Alma Tadema was so moved by Ebers' work that he painted a picture based on that idyll to share with Ebers. In his most famous painting, Idyl of a Picture by His Friend Alma Tadema, he poses a question to the viewer: what is beauty? His friend Alma Tadema, the painter and poet, answers. It seems that Ebers was a student of Alma Tadema's, as this painting is a question from his friend to the painter. The question is about an idyllic scene he has created with his wife and children. The artist presents it as something which is not too far from the truth, but yet not the truth itself.