About the Simeon Solomon Research Archive

The Simeon Solomon Research Archive was originally conceived by Roberto Ferrari in 2000 and was published online for the first time on 20 September that year. ​It was the first research site dedicated to the life and work of the gay Anglo-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist Simeon Solomon and one of the earliest academic sites to appear on some aspect of Pre-Raphaelitism. The SSRA was an augmented version of Roberto's annotated bibliography published in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies (Spring 1999). Over the years the site has had a number of different facelifts and upgrades. For information about previous site history and updates click here. In 2010 Carolyn Conroy joined the SSRA and became its primary editor. In 2018, as well as celebrating eighteen years continous online presence, the site began another major facelift, with new page formats, image galleries and secondary source features added. 

​Below are the 'Reflections on...' articles that appeared in the PRSUS Newsletter (Pre-Raphaelite Society US) in 2007 and 2014.

Reflections on Thirteen Years of the SSRA: 2007-2014

By Carolyn Conroy
As the online Simeon Solomon Research Archive enters its fourteenth year, it seems appropriate to follow up on Roberto C. Ferrari’s original essay (below) on the site’s first seven years of success, published in the Pre-Raphaelite Society of the US Newsletter in 2007. The site, dedicated to the life and art of the gay Anglo-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist, has become increasingly successful since it premiered on the World Wide Web in September 2000. It is now one of the longest running academic websites devoted to an aspect of Pre-Raphaelite study, second only to the Rossetti Hypermedia Archive, and now boasts an average of two hundred unique visitors to the site and three hundred page views per day.

The SSRA began life as an extended online version of Roberto’s annotated Simeon Solomon bibliography, published in the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies (spring 1999), and gradually grew to incorporate digital images of Solomon’s artwork and full text sources. In 2010 I became involved with the site after finishing my doctoral thesis on Solomon’s life and work after 1873, and working closely with Roberto, re-developed the site giving it a new URL (www.simeonsolomon.com) and complete re-design. Our idea was to develop the site by adding more content and to focus particularly on developing an image database for Solomon and his artist siblings Rebecca and Abraham. This we are managing to do with the kind assistance and generosity of galleries and museums all over the world, including the National Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Delaware Art Museum at Wilmington. Certainly recent feedback from student viewers of the site suggests that the image database is fast becoming an invaluable resource for the study of Solomon artwork.

Roberto’s original idea for the site, to encourage the study and increase recognition of Solomon’s work, has certainly been achieved. Since Roberto’s 2007 article my own PhD thesis on Solomon has been completed and a UK MPhil dissertation providing a re-interpretation and re-evaluation of Solomon’s work was submitted in 2010. In addition, this year sees the start of a PhD study on Abraham Solomon at the University of York in the UK alongside another PhD thesis on Victorian art, which will incorporate an element of Solomon research. Alongside student research, ground-breaking academic writing on Solomon continues to be published by art historians, and recent contributions include work by Elizabeth Prettejohn, Colin Cruise, Henrietta Ward, Dominic Janes and Burke O’Long. Recently Roberto and I gave new research papers on Solomon’s work at a major two-day Pre-Raphaelite conference held at Oxford University in the UK which were very well attended and received. Indeed, the future looks bright for Solomon research.

So, what plans do Roberto and I have for the future of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive? I think it is fair to say that we see the site as a continuous work in progress and in the first instance we will continue to add and update our already huge image and textual sources databases. Last year saw the addition to the site of downloadable primary source material, such as exhibition catalogues, and much more of this material will be added soon. By raising additional funding we are also hoping to start a major new project which will deliver an online database of Solomon’s correspondence.  This project will make available fully transcribed and annotated digitized images of Solomon’s letters to viewers of the site, some for the very first time.

As Roberto suggested in 2007 (article below), the SSRA is a labour of love, and it remains that way today. With the future expansion and improvement of the website and the assistance of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook we hope to extend our reach and attract new visitors to the SSRA, and in doing so continue to encourage others to explore and study the artwork of this once forgotten and neglected Pre-Raphaelite.

Reflections on the First Seven Years: 2000-2007

By Roberto C. Ferrari
On September 20, 2000, the Simeon Solomon Research Archive premiered on the World Wide Web. It was the first research site dedicated to the life and art of the gay Anglo-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), and one of the earliest academic sites on some aspect of Pre-Raphaelitism. The SSRA was an augmented version of my annotated bibliography published in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies (Spring 1999). Over the years I enhanced the web site, gradually adding full-text sources, such as reviews from The Art Journal, and digital images of works by Solomon. In 2002, the SSRA was honored with the ARLIS/NA Worldwide Books Electronic Publication Award. More recently, updates have included a bibliography of works about Simeon’s sister, Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), whose work I have studied and now written about as well.

While the SSRA has been a personal achievement, the site’s success has far exceeded my expectations. While I realized the site would increase recognition of Solomon’s work, I did not expect some of the results that have taken place over the past seven years. Almost immediately after its premiere, I began to hear from professors and librarians who told me they utilized the site as an example of free, high-quality research material on the Internet, as compared to commercial or personal sites with questionable information. I also received emails from students around the world asking me a range of interpretive questions about Solomon’s works, his symbolism, his Judaism, and so on. I was even contacted by international private collectors. Some of these individuals actively collected Solomon’s work, while others had no idea they even owned works by Solomon and were able to use the SSRA to discover who he was.

Even more important than the development of the SSRA has been the evolution of studies on Solomon himself. Although he never will be a household name, those in the Pre-Raphaelite world are now aware of his importance to the movement and see him as a major figure among the second generation of Pre-Raphaelites. Much has happened regarding Solomon studies over the past seven years. Colin Cruise and Victoria Osborne co-curated the highly successful centenary-of-his-death exhibition that opened at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery in 2005 and traveled to Munich and London. Published for the exhibition is the catalogue Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites (London: Merrell, 2005), a work that now stands with Gayle Seymour’s 1986 dissertation as being among the essential resources on Solomon. Conferences and symposia on Solomon have taken place at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Yale Center for British Art, and University of York. I have begun transcribing and publishing some of his extant letters for the first time, and I am aware of one PhD dissertation and one MPhil thesis having been completed recently on Solomon.