Simeon Solomon
Encyclopedia
Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate is a road and ward in the northeast part of the City of London, extending north from Gracechurch Street to Norton Folgate. It is named after one of the original seven gates in London Wall...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England – 14 August 1905 in St. Giles's Workhouse, Endell Street) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
Biography
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
ish family. He was the eighth and last child born to merchant Michael (Meyer) Solomon
Meyer Solomon
Michael Solomon was a successful Bishopsgate manufacturer, and was one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the City of London....
and artist Catherine (Kate) Levy. Solomon was a younger brother to fellow painters Abraham Solomon
Abraham Solomon
-Life:Born as the second son of Meyer Solomon, a Leghorn hat manufacturer, by his wife Catherine, in Sandys Street, Bishopsgate, London, on the 7th May 1823. His father was one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the city of London. Two members of the family besides Abraham became...
(1824–1862) and Rebecca Solomon
Rebecca Solomon
Rebecca Solomon was an English painter.-Biography:Rebecca was one of eight children born into an artistically-inclined Jewish merchant family. Her father was Michael Solomon and mother Catherine Levy...
(1832–1886).
Born and educated in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Solomon started receiving lessons in painting from his older brother around 1850. He started attending Carey's Art Academy in 1852. His older sister first exhibited her works at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
during the same year.
As a student at the Royal Academy Schools, Solomon was introduced through Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
to other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, as well as the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
and the painter Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
in 1857. His first exhibition was at the Royal Academy in 1858. He continued to hold exhibitions of his work at the Royal Academy between 1858 and 1872. In addition to the literary paintings
Hierarchy of genres
A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....
favoured by the Pre-Raphaelite school, Solomon's subjects often included scenes from the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
and genre paintings depicting Jewish life and rituals. His association with Swinburne led to his illustrating Swinburne's Lesbia Brandon
Lesbia Brandon
Lesbia Brandon is a pornographic novel by Algernon Charles Swinburne, written between 1859 and 1868 and published posthumously. It was illustrated by Simeon Solomon.-References:Notes...
in 1865.
In 1873 his career was cut short when he was arrested in a public urinal at Stratford Place Mews, off Oxford Street, in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and charged with attempting to commit sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
: he was fined £100. He was arrested again in 1874 in Paris, after which he was sentenced to spend three months in prison.
Workhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
where he continued to produce work; however, his life and talent were blighted by alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
. Twenty years later in 1905, he died from complications brought on by his alcoholism. He was buried at the Jewish Cemetery
Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Willesden Jewish Cemetery is a cemetery for Jews in Beaconsfield Road, Willesden, London Borough of Brent. It opened in 1873 on a site. More properly, it is the Willesden United Synagogue Cemetery.-Notable burials:...
in Willesden
Willesden
Willesden is an area in North West London which forms part of the London Borough of Brent. It is situated 5 miles north west of Charing Cross...
.
Examples of his work are on permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
and at Leighton House. In December 2005/January 2006, there was an important retrospective of his work, held at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and in London at the Ben Uri Gallery
Ben Uri Gallery
The Ben Uri Gallery is a gallery of Jewish art in London, currently sited at 108a Boundary Road, St John's Wood, London NW8 0RH. It is the only museum in Europe to be dedicated to Jewish art...
in October / November 2006.
Popular culture
In Anthony PowellAnthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
's novel A Buyer's Market
A Buyer's Market
A Buyer's Market is the second novel in Anthony Powell's twelve-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time. Published in 1952, it continues the story of narrator Nick Jenkins with his introduction into society after boarding school and university....
(book 2 in A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
), the narrator says of the artist Mr. Deacon that Solomon was one of the few painters he admired.
In Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's long prison letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, De Profundis
De Profundis (letter)
De Profundis is an epistle written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to Lord Alfred Douglas. During its first half Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency...
, Wilde writes of his bankruptcy: “That all my charming things were to be sold: my Burne-Jones drawings: my Whistler drawings: my Monticelli: my Simeon Solomons: my china: my Library…”
See also
- List of Pre-Raphaelite paintings - including the works of Simeon Solomon.
External links
- - The 'new look' Simeon Solomon Research Archive - a repository of information about the artist and his artistic siblings Abraham and Rebecca Solomon
- Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource includes many works by Simeon Solomon
- Information on PhD thesis on Solomon's life after 1873 & biography
- Fallen angel - article by Neil Bartlett from The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 7 October 2005. - A profile of his brother Abraham
- Biography and other info on sister Rebecca Solomon
- Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006), a 500-page scholarly volume that considers the prominent Victorian writers of Uranian poetry and prose, as well as several artists such as Solomon (the author has made this volume available in a free, open-access, PDF version).
- The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.