Simeon Solomon

1840-1905

Artist

Simeon Solomon was a leading light in the popular group of Victorian artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

His family were artistic. His mother Kate was an amateur miniaturist; his elder brother Abraham painted “genre” scenes from everyday life and his sister Rebecca, though later overlooked, was considered at the time a talented woman artist.

Solomon’s early work featured Jewish life and Bible stories, but after he became friends with Pre-Raphaelite painters like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and the poet Algernon Swinburne, he developed a highly personal style of imagery drawing on classicism. He travelled and exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy of Art.

Tragically, in 1873, when he was at the height of his career, he was arrested with another man in a public lavatory and convicted for public indecency. His reputation was destroyed. Alcoholic and friendless, he lived in poverty until his death in London’s St. Giles workhouse in 1905.

It took decades for interest in Solomon’s work to be revived. Many now see his signature aesthetic as a coded way of expressing same sex desire during a time when to be gay was a criminal offence. His works can now be found in public and private collections around the world.

Solomon’s memorial at Willesden Cemetery was restored in 2014 by descendants and art historians with a design that reflects his new-found acceptance and celebrity. It pays tribute to his 1870 watercolour, The Sleepers and One Who Watcheth.

Simeon Solomon by David Wilkie Wynfield (1837 1887)