After studying in Italy, Thomas Gotch painted works on the theme of motherhood and childhood. Here the jewel-like colors and gold background recall early Christian altarpieces. ‘Sing praises to God, sing praises: Sing praises unto our King, Sing praises, For God is King of all the earth: Sing praises with understanding’, from Psalm xlvii: 6 and 7, is inscribed in Latin along the top. Gotch was a founding member of the Royal Colonial Society of British Artists and the array of clothing may have been intended to communicate the universality of worship, but the painting follows European tradition in representing the angelic singers as pale skinned. Alleluia is one of a number of compositions by Gotch that were painted throughout the 1890s and 1900s in the new style that the artist adopted following a visit to Italy in 1891-2. Compositions by Gotch post-1892 generally take as their focus the themes of motherhood and child development. Other examples of such work by him include, The Child Enthroned (1894), The Heir to All The Ages (1897), A Pageant of Childhood (1899, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and Holy Motherhood (1902, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne). These works, which share a common hieratic style and draw also on the symbolism of religious ritual, caused the artist to be linked with a contemporary revival of interest in English Pre-Raphaelitism. The composition, which draws on the visual tradition of the devotional altarpiece or reredos, was described by one critic of the 1896 Royal Academy exhibition as 'a rather powerful and rich scheme of color, aided by a gold background' in which the figures were 'lacking spontaneity and natural movement' (Magazine of Art, 1896, p.358). In a long monographic article on Gotch written in 1910, the American critic, Charles Caffin, commented of Alleluia: 'A touch of seriousness shadows Gotch's vision. One discerns it ... in the Alleluia of the Tate Gallery, where two rows of children in dresses of damask and brocade stand in front of a gilded architectural wainscot, singing the old Latin hymn of praise to God. In this modern "Cherub's Choir" the artist ... has translated it into the symbolism of his own idea of childhood, which is not merely a love of childhood as a stationary aspect of life, but a step in the evolution of the individual and the race' (Caffin, p.930). In 1896, the Windsor Magazine declared of Alleluia that: 'Almost every Eastern and Western nation is represented in the rainbow robes which clothe the children' (The Windsor Magazine, p.279, quoted in Wallace, n.pag). Gotch's reference to other nations of the world in the costumes worn by the children may, as has been suggested, refer to the 'universality of worship' (E.T Cook, A Popular Handbook to the Tate Gallery, 1898, p.211). However, Gotch had been a founding member of the Royal Colonial Society of British Artists, and such national inclusivity may also be viewed as an allusion to the colonial expansion of the British Empire. Indeed, events such as Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee held in 1897, the year after the public exhibition of Alleluia, were designed to commemorate the imperial splendor of the Empire under British rule at the height of its power. (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gotch-alleluia-n01590)