Simeon Solomon
Simeon Solomon (born October 9, 1840 in London , † August 4, 1905 in London (St. Giles's Workhouse)) was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter .
life and work
Simeon Solomon was the youngest of eight children in an Orthodox Jewish family. His talent as a painter showed up early on, and he probably received his first training from his older brother Abraham Solomon , who was already a painter.
Solomon initially studied from 1853 to 1856 at the Academy of FS Cary. On April 24, 1856 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts . Solomon's early works were inspired by his family's culture and mostly deal with themes from the Old Testament. He also became acquainted with them. Other of his pictures show medieval literary themes, which were also preferred by the Pre-Raphaelites.
In 1857 or 1858 Solomon met the painter Rossetti . Through him he got in contact with the other members of the Pre-Raphaelites . He soon joined this circle. For example, he designed stained glass windows for Morris , Marshall, Faulkner & Co. for All Saints Church in Middleton Cheney, South Northamptonshire . Some of his most famous paintings of this time show figures in deep religious immersion.
His pictures were admired by the other Pre-Raphaelites, for example Burne-Jones said of him: "Solomon was the greatest artist of all of us."
It was through this circle that Solomon met the poet Algernon Swinburne , whose preferences influenced Solomon's works. Gradually the subjects of his watercolors and paintings changed from Old Testament materials to those of Greco-Roman antiquity, such as Sappho . Many of these pictures depict melancholy female figures. The subjects are often kept vague and an aesthetic mood is conjured up.
Solomon was especially celebrated for his painting Habet! (He's got it). It shows the Roman empress and other women in the box of an amphitheater demanding the final fatal blow for the defeated gladiator . For Solomon's contemporaries, the image was the perfect expression of Roman decadence .
In 1865 the Dudley Gallery was opened in London. Solomon then exhibited most of his paintings there for the first time. Often these pictures show young men at religious rites. Solomon was soon a member of the exhibition committee.
In 1871, Solomon published a prose poem called A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep . The allegory of love, a handsome young man, is tormented and eventually glorified. Solomon also dealt with this topic in many of his paintings from this period. The motifs from the mid-1860s onwards showed more male nudes and met with rejection from some Victorian critics.
In 1873 Solomon was arrested with another man in a public toilet and convicted of " sodomy " (homosexuality). Contact with the art scene was lost despite an exhibition at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters , Solomon was no longer able to exhibit his pictures and was difficult to sell. He died impoverished and alcoholic and was eventually almost forgotten.
Works
(Selection)
- Babylon was a golden chalice (Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery), 1859
- Schadrach, Meschach and Abed-Nego , 1863
- Sappho and Erina in a garden at Mytilene (Tate Britain), 1864
- Have! (Bradford Museums, Galleries & Heritage), 1865
- Bachus (Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery), 1867
- Bach's Prelude (private collection), 1868
- Mystery of Faith (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), 1871
- The Dawn (Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery), 1871
- Hosannah! (Tate Britain), 1871
- The Bride, Groom, and Sad Love (Victoria and Albert Museum), 1865
- Sacramentum Amoris (lost, contemporary photograph in the Victoria and Albert Museum), 1866
literature
- Victoria Osborne: Revelation of Love: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites . Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-923244-24-X .
- Johannes Mahraun: Hapless “child prodigy” . Pre-Raphaelite with Jewish roots: The British painter Simeon Solomon (1840–1905), in: Tagespost, October 20, 2019.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Solomon, Simeon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British Pre-Raphaelite painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 9, 1840 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th August 1905 |
| Place of death | London (St. Giles's Workhouse) |