Simeon Solomon
​Secondary Sources 1960-1989

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This section of secondary sources starts to reflect a change in the perception of Solomon as being an important figure and one who should be sympathized with rather than disregarded. This is also the time period where scholars first began to discuss his homosexuality as evidenced in his art.

​For reviews of his work in exhibitions between 1960 and 1989 click HERE.

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Kolsteren, Steven. "The Dream of Simeon Solomon." Dreamworks: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 5 (1986/1987): 113-22.

ANNOTATION
The allegorical characters of A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep are examined in relation to Solomon's paintings. Includes         illustrations of Love in Autumn, Healing Night and Wounded Love, Sacramentum Amoris, and Sleep.

Morgan, Stuart. "Neil Bartlett and Robin Whitmore, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep." Art Forum, 26 (September 1987): 144.

ANNOTATION
Part 1 of this alternative and experimental play by Bartlett (1990) based on Solomon's prose-poem is praised for the             playwright's interpretation of Solomon, exploring the state of homosexuality that each represents in his own time, including the subtext of AIDS in Bartlett's play.

ORIGINAL SOURCE:  Download Bartlett's Original Play Programme 

Anonymous. "Night by Simeon Solomon." Burlington Magazine, 131 (July 1989): xviii-xix.

ANNOTATION
This illustration, not in Reynolds (1984), the Geffrye Museum catalogue (1985), or Seymour's dissertation (1986), is followed by commentary on the source for the subject of the drawing and the prose-poem. Solomon's work is said to foreshadow that of  Fernand Khnopff, the Belgian Symbolist, by almost twenty years.Werner, Alfred. "The Sad Ballad of Simeon Solomon." Kenyon Review 22 (Summer 1960): 392-407.

ANNOTATION
This article is the beginning of a transition to a more sympathetic view of Solomon. It attempts to correct the lack of         acknowledgment of Solomon in artistic and Jewish circles with a more sensitive portrayal of the artist and his work. Primarily biographical in nature, it compares Solomon to Blake, Henry Fuseli, Moreau, and others in lifestyle and art, with quotes from Burne-Jones, Swinburne, and Solomon himself. Includes an illustration of Two Heads.

Werner, Alfred. "Jewish Artists of the Age of Emancipation." Jewish Art. Ed. Cecil Roth. Tel Aviv, Israel: Massadah; P.E.C. Press, Inc., 1961, 539-574.

ANNOTATION
Werner attempts to rescue the names and histories of many nineteenth-century Jewish European artists. Both Abraham and  Simeon Solomon are included in this discussion. Werner praises Simeon's best work for their "beauty of line and composition, especially in his drawing of faces, whether he drew the sensitive faces of young rabbis or the more sensuous ephebic countenances of Greek youths." He discusses what made Habet! one of Simeon's most famous paintings and explores the impact of his downfall on his art. Includes a black-and-white image of Pharaoh's Daughter, also known as The Toilette of a Roman Lady.

Fredeman, William E. Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965, 212-15, passim.

ANNOTATION
This standard for all Pre-Raphaelite research includes citations of Solomon criticism, as well as important citations of his book illustrations and exhibitions of his work.


Busst, A. J. L. "The Image of the Androgyne in the Nineteenth Century." Romantic Mythologies. Ed. Ian Fletcher. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967, 1-95.

ANNOTATION
Busst is one of the first scholars to write a critical study on the androgyne/hermaphrodite in nineteenth-century cultural studies. He focuses primarily on French literary sources, and divides the popularity of the androgyne in an optimistic, socially-    derived religious image early in the century to a pessimistic, private-based sexual image later in the century. Solomon is mentioned a few times along with Moreau and Burne-Jones as examples of artists who utilized the androgyne image in the latter half of the century as a harmonized blend of good and evil, a sensual mix of lechery and virginity, and an incestuous relationship in the use of multiple androgynous partners. Includes reproductions of The Singing of Love and Night and Sleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to Stephen Wildman for reminding us of this source.

Croft-Cooke, Rupert. Feasting with Panthers: A New Consideration of Some Late Victorian Writers. London: W. H. Allen, 1967, 29-62, 78, 116-18, 183-84, et al.

ANNOTATION
Croft-Cooke's revised lives of the more sexually notorious of late Victorians include Swinburne, Houghton, Stenbock, Solomon, and Wilde. He describes Solomon as a camp queen, epitomizing the effeminacy stereotypically associated with homosexuals. He also speculates on Solomon's behavior and relationships presuming a sexual encounter between Pater and Solomon, without substantiation.

Lambourne, Lionel. "A Simeon Solomon Sketch-book." Apollo 85 (1967): 59-61.

ANNOTATION
Lambourne argues that scholars need to look beyond Solomon's scandalous behavior and focus on his genius as an artist. Though mentioned in Pre-Raphaelite memoirs, Solomon's sketchbook is here discussed for the first time, though its contents are described without analysis. This sketchbook is located in the Mishkan Le'Omanut, the Museum of Art, Ein Harod Kibbutz, Israel. It includes sketches made by Solomon from the age of 14 to his early 30s. Ten are illustrated in addition to a caricature sent in a letter to Alexander Munro.

Fuller, Jean Overton. Swinburne: A Critical Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, 1968, 319 pp.

ANNOTATION
Fuller discusses Solomon's relationship with Swinburne through the letters he wrote to him that were published in Cecil Y. Lang's edition of Swinburne's letters. She also includes three additional letters by Solomon to Swinburne that were part of the   same cache of letters from the British Library but not published by Lang.
REPRINTED
Swinburne: A Biography. New York: Schocken, 1971, 317 pp.

Hunt, John Dixon. The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination 1848-1900. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1968, 262 pp.

ANNOTATION
Hunt gives a brief analysis of Solomon's Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep as a work heavily influenced by the art and writing of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. This is the first literary analysis of the prose-poem since the 1871 reviews and Ford's book (1908). Ignoring Werner's and Lambourne's sympathetic trend, Hunt sees Solomon as contributing to the decline in nineteenth-century art by introducing debased images such as the hermaphrodite.

Lambourne, Lionel. "Abraham Solomon, Painter of Fashion, and Simeon Solomon, Decadent Artist." Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 21 (1968): 274-86 + 21 illus.

ANNOTATION
Introducing the lives of two important Jewish artists of Victorian Britain, this superb account includes anecdotes and detailed historical facts on the lives of both brothers and their sister Rebecca, drawn from such sources as descendants of the Solomon  family. In short, it is among the most authoritatively detailed accounts of the life of Simeon Solomon.

Reade, Brian, ed. Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970, 17, 19, 24, 36-38, 133-41.

ANNOTATION
Equating the "homosexual" with all erotic aspects of the homosocial, from friendships to sexual relations, Reade's anthology is the first to include an excerpt from A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep as homosexual literature. Reflecting now-dated notions of homosexuality as a chosen behavior, Reade discusses Solomon's homosexuality in the context of his relations with Swinburn, Houghton, Pater, Browning, Hollyer, and Stenbock. Reade has transcribed a letter dated ca. 1886 from Solomon to Hollyer regarding his first encounter with Count Stenbock. Also includes the 1865 drawing Love Talking to Boys.

LeBourgeois, John Y. "Swinburne and Simeon Solomon." Notes and Queries no 20 (March 1973): 91-95.

ANNOTATION
Attempting to clarify the early 1870s relationship between Swinburne and Solomon, this is the first study to focus on the     rumored homosexuality of both men. Based on their letters regarding the 1870-1871 arrest and trials of Boulton and Park for transvestitism, LeBourgeois believes that neither Swinburne nor Solomon were actively homosexual until Solomon was arrested in 1873, after which time Swinburne wanted nothing more to do with him because Solomon had crossed from the theoretical to the physical.

Werner, Alfred. "Simeon Solomon: A Rediscovery." Arts and Artists 9 (January 1975): 6-11.

 ANNOTATION
This revision of Werner's 1960 article, with the same title as his 1966 article, repeats the known biographical information and  argues that Solomon's best works are from the last years of his life, well after his 1873 arrest. Illustrations include Group of Nine Figures and Youth Reciting Tales to Ladies.

Hook, Philip. "The Classical Revival in English Painting." Connoisseur 772 (June 1976): 122-127.

ANNOTATION
Hook focuses on the popularity of classicism in Victorian painting during the 1860s. He discusses Solomon at the very end of the article as a link between this visual Hellenism and the literary/philosophy Hellenism made popular by Pater, Oscar Browning, and others. He also notes how classical works allowed him to explore his homosexual yearnings and found justification in Pater's writings.

Christian, John. Symbolists and Decadents. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977.

ANNOTATION
Solomon, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones are included among the Pre-Raphaelites whose later works epitomize the Symbolist art movement. Although only one of Solomon's works is included (Dawn), the author notes in the description that the "Symbolist movement owes much to Solomon's psychology," and that his downfall allowed for Burne-Jones to pick up where Solomon left off.
REPRINTED
New York: Park South Books, 1985.

Levey, Michael. The Case of Walter Pater. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978, 232 pp.

ANNOTATION
The outward homosexuality of Solomon is contrasted with Pater's suppressed feelings. Unlike others in their circle, Pater admired his friend's work after the 1873 arrest and spoke with Rebecca Solomon about rehabilitating Simeon. He wrote about  his Bacchus paintings in an essay and was the recipient of a drawing by Solomon for his fiftieth birthday in 1889. Solomon drew  one of the few images of Pater.

Johnson, Wendell Stacy. Living in Sin: The Victorian Sexual Revolution. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979, 126, 159, 161-70, 172, 204.

 ANNOTATION
Johnson continues the work of Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians (1964). In a more lighthearted approach, he interprets the sexualities and relationships of various Victorian writers and artists, from Dickens to Wilde. The chapter entitled "Sexual Deviants" focuses on the homosexuality of Solomon, along with Swinburne, Burton, and Wilde. Though Johnson's information    about Solomon is not always correct, he is the only author to transcribe the jury's indictment of Solomon in February 1873, and  the first to discuss the charge of sodomy in its socio-historical context.

Ober, William B. "Swinburne's Masochism: Neuropathology and Psychopathology." Boswell's Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men's Afflictions. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979, 43-88.§

ANNOTATION
In this interesting essay, Ober attempts to explain Swinburne's alternative sexual habits such as flagellation through medical and psychological analyses. Solomon and George Powell are discussed with Swinburne in the context of homosexuality. Ober relates the anecdote of Swinburne and Solomon running naked in Rossetti's house on 16 Cheyne Walk and sees this as an experimentation by two youths to introduce the other to his sexual practice. He believes the experiment was unsuccessful.

Stein, Judith Ellen. "The Iconography of Sappho, 1775-1875." Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1981, [296-297].

ANNOTATION
This art history dissertation traces a century of images of Sappho, including Solomon's two most popular images of Sappho, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytelene and the study of the head of Sappho. Solomon's own homosexuality is seen as the motivation behind his depiction of Sappho's more aggressive, lesbian behaviour.

Wood, Christopher. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981, 95, 116, 131, 133-34, 150.

ANNOTATION
Wood credits Rossetti and Burne-Jones with influencing Solomon's figures of allegorical femininity, and Rossetti and Swinburne for corrupting Solomon by encouraging his pursuit of homosexuality in his art and life. Included here are a beautiful full-colour illustration of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego Preserved from the Burning Fiery Furnace, and black-and-white illustrations of his early self-portrait, a study for the head of Sappho, and Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytelene.
REPRINTED
New York: Crescent Books, 1994.

​Kolsteren, Steven. "Simeon Solomon and Dante Gabriel Rossetti." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 2 (1982): 35-48.

ANNOTATION
Kolsteren discusses the influence of Rossetti on Solomon, and the mythology of love--spiritual and physical--in the works of both Rossetti and Solomon. The lengthy list of primary and secondary works cited is helpful.

Collins, Richard Wayne. "A Toy of Double Shape: The Hermaphrodite as Art and Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain." Diss. University of California-Irvine, 1984.

ANNOTATION
Within the interdisciplinary spectrum of Western culture from Plato's Symposium to Aubrey Beardsley, Solomon is the first to depict the hermaphrodite in art, while Swinburne is the first to truly name him/her in literature. The Singing of Love is     analyzed as a Neo-Platonic symbol based on the Symposium.

Kolsteren, Steven. "Simeon Solomon and the Romantic Poets." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 4 (May 1984): 62-69.

ANNOTATION
Poems by Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley influenced some of Solomon's drawings and paintings. The article is brief and lacks textual analysis, but Kolsteren closes by pointing out how Solomon bridges the Romanticism of the early nineteenth century to the Symbolism of the fin-de-siecle.

Reynolds, Simon. The Vision of Simeon Solomon. Stroud, England: Catalpa Press, 1984, 183 pp

ANNOTATION
The prose-poem A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep is the focus of this survey of Solomon's life and work. In general, Reynolds provides the most extensive study available for such an overview, with opinions and stories from Boyce, Oscar Browning, Holiday, Swinburne, Pater, Burne-Jones, Richmond, Robert Browning, Payne, Meynell, Francis Thompson, Horne, and Yeats. One of its best aspects is the inclusion of the entire prose-poem, published for the first time since the 1909 edition. Colour illustrations of six of Solomon's paintings, plus 71 black-and-white illustrations, are included. An appendix lists Solomon's exhibited works at the Royal Academy and Dudley Gallery during his lifetime, and the Baillie Gallery after his death.

Bohm-Duchen, Monica. "The Jewish Background." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 8-11.

ANNOTATION
The Solomons as artists in Victorian England are contextualized within a history of Judaism in England and the gradual social acceptance of Jews in the nineteenth century. While discussing all three siblings in light of the amount of Jewishness evident in their works, Bohm-Duchen spends most of the article focusing on Simeon and the social acceptance of his Jewish-themed works, Simeon seemed more fascinated by the mysticism of religion than the specific rituals of Judaism or Christianity.

Cooper, Emmanuel. "A Vision of Love: Homosexual and Androgynous Themes in Simeon Solomon's Work After 1873." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 31-35.

ANNOTATION
Solomon's arrest in 1873 is pivotal to the development of his art. The use of the androgyne becomes more prevalent after the arrest, perhaps in part because of Burne-Jones's use of it in contemporary subjects. Solomon's version, however, is notably different, inspired by his love of religious mysticism and his personal identification with an idealized, spiritual form of sexuality.  The extension of the androgyne in the heads he depicted during the 1890s suggests that the physical body was now ignored in  favor of androgynous spirituality.

Geffrye Museum. Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). Pref. by Jeffery Daniels. London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 87 pp.

ANNOTATION
This catalogue for an exhibition held at the Geffrye Museum in London (8 November to 31 December 1985), and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (13 January to 2 March 1986), is an excellent resource for information on the art of Solomon and his siblings. (See six other entries for individual essays on Simeon.) The preface and the essay on Abraham Solomon by Jeffery Daniels and the essay on Rebecca Solomon by Pamela Gerrish Nunn discuss their contributions to Victorian  painting. The catalogue also includes a list of exhibitions featuring Simeon's work, and books and periodicals containing his illustrations. Includes color and black-and-white illustrations of works by all three artists.

Kolsteren, Steven. "Simeon Solomon and the Song of Songs." Journal of Jewish Art, 6 (1985): 47-59.

ANNOTATION
This intriguing article addresses and attempts to delineate Solomon's personal iconography and symbology, as seen primarily in his early illustrations to the Biblical Song of Songs and its influence on A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep. The discussion of the illustrations from the Song of Songs relies on Ford's (1908) dating and structure, however, which since have been corrected by  Seymour (1986). 21 drawings, illustrations, and paintings Solomon did from 1857 through the 1890s are included.

Lambourne, Lionel. "Simeon Solomon: Artist and Myth." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 24-27.

ANNOTATION
Solomon's relationships with Swinburne, Oscar Browning, and Pater are considered in the way that they may have influenced      one another, citing for instance how Pater perceived Solomon as the character Flavian in Marcus the Epicurean. Solomon's trips to Italy influenced his art and his homosexual lifestyle thereafter.

Lambourne, Lionel. "The Solomon Family." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 6-7.

ANNOTATION
The Solomon family is introduced through biographical information on their grandfather Aaron and his children, how the family established itself among the upper-middle class, and the early art education of Abraham and Simeon through their admission in the Royal Academy.

Lambourne, Lionel and Gayle Seymour. "Catalogue of Works: Simeon Solomon." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905). London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 65-82.

 ANNOTATION
These two leading scholars on Solomon work together to provide the commentaries on the largest portion of this exhibit (46 items), with provenance and exhibition information when known. 51 black-and-white and five color illustrations of Solomon's paintings, drawings, and engravings dating from 1855 through 1897 are included, some of which where owned by Lambourne.

Seymour, Gayle. "The Trial and Its Aftermath." Solomon, a Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) London: Inner London Education Authority, 1985, 28-30.

ANNOTATION
Seymour focuses on Simeon's life from the time of his 1873 arrest until his death in 1905. She details the events of the arrest and eventual conviction, and from the letters of those who knew him she speculates on his whereabouts immediately after the  trial. She reveals that, contrary to conventional wisdom, his Pre-Raphaelite friends did not immediately abandon him; rather, they disowned him only after he attempted to sell Swinburne's letters. The rest of his life also shows that his family supported him during and after the trial; it was he who rejected his family.

Cooper, Emmanuel. The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, xix, 64-70, 74, 80.

ANNOTATION
Drawing a cultural comparison between homosexuality and the Aesthetic movement, Cooper perceives Solomon as "the artist   who most expressed the ideals and hopes...of the aesthetic school." He focuses on aspects of the spiritual aesthetic in Solomon's androgynes and homosexually-themed works, such as Bacchus and Bridegroom and Sad Love.

Seymour, Gayle Marie. "The Life and Work of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)." Diss. University of California-Santa Barbara, 1986.

ANNOTATION
Half of the nearly 450 pages are devoted to illustrations of much that Solomon painted, drew, or illustrated, thus providing a version of a catalogue raisonne, though without an extensive exhibition history and provenance. Seymour focuses on Solomon's early life and work up until his 1873 arrest. His art is compared to a diversity of work ranging from Assyrian relief sculpture to Burne-Jones's art and Swinburne's aestheticism.