Simeon Solomon: the gay, Pre-Raphaelite genius is finally recognised

Solomon was born in London to a well off, assimilated family, the last of eight children. The family were artistically inclined; his mother, Kate Levy Solomon was an amateur miniaturist painter and two of his siblings, Abraham and Rebecca, were also artists and both were among the first Jews to exhibit at the Royal Academy, London.

His brother, Abraham, was also the first fine artist to have his work featured in the Jewish Chronicle in 1843, with a description of a now untraceable painting, portraying “a synagogue reader on the steps of the ark”. It is hard to imagine today, but Jewish-themed art did not really reach a European audience until Chagall at least half a century later and it is encouraging to see that the Jewish community at the time were encouraged to commission Abraham Solomon, in order to put British Jewish artists on the cultural map.

In this favourable milieu, Solomon was considered a child prodigy and his talents were quickly noticed by his brother and his artistic circle, known as the Pre-Raphaelites.

The Pre-Raphaelites are associated with popular portrayals of classically beautiful, pale-skinned women, with long, wavy hair, draped in colourful gowns and vivid depictions of classical scenes. They believed art should be real, meaningful and socially engaged and the works of Simeon Solomon quickly fell within this remit.

The most renowned of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was a decade older than Simeon, feted him from the start as a gifted young watercolourist, painter and draughtsman. In return he was heavily influenced by Rossetti’s own style. When fellow painter, Edward Burne Jones, met him in the 1850s, he lauded Simeon as “the greatest of us all.” However, Solomon’s artistic career was tragically derailed in 1873, when at just 33 years old, he was arrested and convicted for “public indecency” a code for homosexual acts, in central London.

Unlike Oscar Wilde, who met this fate just 20 years later and managed to maintain public affection, Solomon’s career was tragically felled by it. His reputation was destroyed and his closest friends ostracised him. As Livingstone explains, “the Pre-Raphaelites were radical in their time, but only under the constraints of what Victorian society allowed. Being charged for these offences as a gay and Jewish man, would have been too much for them and too costly to their reputations to keep him in the circle, going forward.”

These convictions are probably what brought him into the turbulent chapter with the Jewish Chronicle itself. In the 1850s and 1860s, at the peak of the young artist’s career, the paper lauded Solomon greatly, as a rising star with a strong Jewish sensibility, who skilfully painted Jewish life, most notably radiant, evocative biblical scenes and illustrations of Jewish rituals. At a time when most Victorian religious art was overwhelmingly Christian, this was wildly radical in itself.

Carrying the Scrolls of the Law (1867 is held at Delaware Art Museum[Missing Credit]

Fifty years later, as Solomon fell into destitution, rumours of his death in the St Giles workhouse, Covent Garden, reached the newspaper and it mistakenly published an obituary with harsh personal remarks about his “debauchery,” and “mental disease”. These had to be quickly retracted, as Solomon was in reality still alive and his prestigious family sought to protect his, or more likely their, reputation.

When he did pass away, six months later in August 1905, a kinder obituary appeared with the personal insults removed and Solomon’s grave at Willesden Jewish cemetery, restored in 2014 by his descendants , is now one of the most regularly visited of the grounds.

The roller-coaster life of Simeon Solomon, with periods of acclaim and falls from grace, may actually offer some explanation for the renewed interest in him. Like others whose talents burned out prematurely, his legacy has been eventually revisited, with greater sensitivity and reflection.

As well as inclusion in the Cambridge show, there is currently a huge resurgence of interest in his work and greater recognition across the Atlantic. The Delaware Art Museum, Delaware, USA, has one of the most significant holdings of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the UK, mainly due to the local association with William Morris and the establishment of the Arts and Crafts movement in America.

Now, it is preparing for a large solo retrospective of more than 180 works, to be launched in spring next year. It will be the first solo exhibition of his work at a major art institution abroad. A big driver of this interest is the way Solomon is now viewed as a painter who worked with originality and conviction in addressing themes that very much touch on contemporary interests, such as same-sex love, desire and the representation of race.

Academic and critical interest has been recently sealed in a landmark study to accompany the exhibition, “Simeon Solomon: Queer and Jewish in Victorian London, edited by Roberto C Ferrari and Sophie Lynford and published by Yale University Press.

“Few artists worked with such breadth, originality and conviction as Simeon Solomon” the authors note. “His radiant biblical subjects, haunting mythological visions and intimate scenes of same-sex love make him one of the most daring and distinctive figures in the Pre-Raphaelite movement.”

The Delaware holds one of Solomon’s most feted early works The Mother of Moses (1859) which was first exhibited in 1860 at the Royal Academy in London, when Solomon was just 19.

The Mother of Moses, painted in 1860 when Solomon was 19[Missing Credit]

It is thought that the studies for this painting were done a year earlier, in London, and the woman depicted as the sister of Moses is model and muse for the circle at this time, Fanny Eaton, a Black Jamaican mother of ten. Fanny was a popular model for the Pre-Raphaelites, but she was not considered marriage material, or desirable and was usually presented in a more neutral way. Solomon’s drawings of Fanny at the Fitzwilliam exhibition have great intimacy, dignity and a naturalness of pose.

“Of all the artworks featuring Fanny Eaton,” says curator Livingstone, “it stands out that Simeon Solomon captured the real her, with no frills or expectations. She was most likely doing the modelling to support her large family and with these drawings we can truly see the woman alone with herself.”

Much was made of him using a Black woman as The Mother of Moses painting, when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1860. Today, we simply view a painting of a tender mother and infant, looking culturally appropriate to the story of the Exodus and a welcome contrast to the white figured, highly idealised, religious paintings to which we are used. In other words, authentic. Yet, at the Royal Academy, the painting was both praised and derided. The skin colour of the “Israelite” was “far too black” according to the art publication, Athenaeum, who were also challenged by its naturalism. Placing a Black woman as an Israelite slave evoked the sensitivities of the audience to the abolition of slavery, 25 years earlier in the UK, but still very recent in the US. The exhibition brought Solomon his first English patron, which heralded success.

Study of Fanny Eaton for The Mother of Moses[Missing Credit]

Throughout his career, Solomon was also fascinated with depicting religious men. His poet friend Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote of his “Hebrew love of vast atmosphere and infinite spiritual range” and noted Solomon’s “certain loving interest in the old sacred forms.”

In Carrying the Scrolls of the Law (1871), a young Jewish man, clearly in synagogue, is hugging the Torah scrolls almost sensually, in devotion. The detail of the shawl-covered, lone Jewish woman watching the man from a balcony, is very stirring.

Desire, mostly same-sex desire, is another theme persistently explored in his works even well beyond the arrest. Paintings like the two beautiful male love-struck faces in The Moon and Sleep (1894) and Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), a touching image of female love, reveal a fascination with sensuality and beauty and a willingness to explore taboos.

The painting Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene is held at Delaware Art MuseumTate / Tate Images

At the Fitzwilliam exhibition we can see Solomon’s portrait of King David (date unknown), a wonderful example of how the artist’s visual and emotional preoccupations collide on the canvas. He celebrates the artistic side of David, shown lovingly holding his lyre and pays homage to his role as a psalmist and musician in Jewish history.

The painting is also seen as a profound exploration of androgynous beauty. Soft features blur lines between male and female. Solomon often used David’s celebrated biblical love for Jonathan as a legitimate role model for same-sex affection.

Many of his paintings were owned by his first cousin, Myer Salaman, a successful wholesale dealer in ostrich feathers for the millinery industry, who seems to be the only relative who supported the artist in hard times and who paid for his bail in 1873.

In the days after Solomon’s death, Myer wrote: “He was a clever artist and at the time of his death had commissions from people in high society, Sometimes he did the work, and sometimes he didn’t.”

It is poignant now that Solomon, who was talked about with both reverence and regret for a century too long, is now a source of pride and admiration – a reminder of the enduring power of art to transcend societal boundaries.

While Solomon’s work sells for hundreds of thousands at auction today, there was recently a portrait painting by his brother and early mentor Abraham, for sale at Chiswick Auctions, with an opening bid of £1200.

The fact that the Jewish Chronicle applauded Abraham so strongly over Simeon, yet he still prevailed to make his mark in the end, makes for an uplifting tale of triumph over tragedy. It could even be the making of a third obituary. Hopefully the one he deserves.

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A Call to Art: William Morris and The Pre Raphaelites is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge until  May 3, 2027 fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Simeon Solomon: Queer and Jewish in Victorian London is at Delaware Art Museum, March to June 20 27, 2027 delart.org