Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)

Photographer: David Wilkie Wynfield (1837–1887)

ca. 1860s

Albumen print with textured paper surface layer

200 mm x 150 mm

Collection: © Royal Academy of Arts, London (object no. 03/7315)

Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited

Reproduced with kind permission. [Right click disabled; not to be downloaded. See commentary below, and mouse over the text for links.]

Simeon Solomon (homepage)

Wynfield as a Painter

Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan

Wynfield has chosen to photograph Solomon in "Oriental" costume with a turban similar to male figures portrayed in his early religious Jewish subjects like Ruth and Boaz of 1862 or his illustrations for the Dalziel Bible Gallery such as The Veiled Bride. The photographs of artists like Solomon and Edward Burne-Jones are amongst the most surprising of the series of artist photographs that Wynfield took. It is likely that Wynfield met these artists through their membership in the 38th Middlesex corps of the Artists' Volunteer Rifles [Artists' Rifles]. By 1866 both Solomon and Wynfield were on the Committee for the Second General Exhibition of Water Colour Drawings at the Dudley Gallery. Solomon was one of the rising stars of the gallery and greatly influenced the group of young artists known as the Poetry Without Grammar School. Solomon's promising career disintegrated when he was arrested in 1873 in a public urinal at Stratford Place Mews and charged with the homosexual offence of attempted sodomy. Afterwards he was generally shunned by respectable society and largely ceased to exhibit publicly in London.

Bibliography

Hacking, Juliet. Princes of Victorian Bohemia. London: Prestel, 2000. 68 and 74.

"Simeon Solomon, ca. 1860s." Royal Academy of Arts, London. Web. 15 December 2023.

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Created 15 December 2023