A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow of the Æsthetic sunset. It was not a very brilliant period. Professor Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol. Nothing was expected of either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would complete his education. Names are more suggestive than dates and give less pain. Then, as now, there were ‘cultured’ undergraduates, and those who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls—little notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and Botticelli. When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while ‘Temperantia’ and the ‘Primavera’ were left in their places, ‘Love dying from the breath of Lust,’ ‘Antinous,’ and other drawings by Solomon with titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion. Views of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more appropriate to Uncle Parker’s and Aunt Jane’s tastes. More advanced undergraduates, who ‘knew what things were,’ possessed even originals. Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without prejudice.

Simeon Solomon was born in 1841. He was the third son of Michael Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted to the Freedom of London. The elder brother, Abraham, became a successful painter of popular subjects (‘Waiting for the Verdict’ and ‘First and Third Class’), and died on the day of his election to the Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success some of Millais’s pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh’s Art School in Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common, though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to have maintained, in after years, ‘that he was the greatest artist of us all.’ Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr. Ernest Hart, his brother’s brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in the Greek Studies will be found a graceful reference to the ‘young Hebrew painter’ whose ‘Bacchus’ at the Academy obviously contributed to the ‘gem-like’ flame of which we have heard so much.

In a short-lived magazine, the Dark Blue, of July 1871, may be found a characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon’s strange rhapsody, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, his only literary work, now a great rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. ‘Since the first years of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high imagination, power, and promise,’ Swinburne says, ‘he has been at work long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.’ It would be difficult to add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet’s eloquent eulogy of his friend’s talents. An interesting piece of autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us that his own poem of ‘Erotion,’ in the first series of Poems and Ballads, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another number of the same magazine there appeared ‘The End of the Month,’ to accompany a new design of Solomon’s, the poem appearing later in the second series of Poems and Ballads. Very few English artists—not even Millais—began life with fairer prospects. Thackeray wrote in one of the ‘Roundabout Papers’ for 1860: ‘For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. The picture is (346) “Moses,” by S. Solomon. I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented to my mind the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: “Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object,” and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.’ This beautiful picture, painted when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition, where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon’s masterpieces. Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid inquest reported in the Times of August 18th, 1905.

That Solomon’s pictures were at first better known to the public than those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous The Fleshly School of Poetry. As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah. He was imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private asylum by his friends. Scandal having subsided, since he showed no further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and returning to the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half an hour!—a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent his week-ends in the lock-up. Several picture-dealers tried giving him an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the police had to be called in. He was found selling matches in the Mile End Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success. The companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves and blackmailers. A story is told that one afternoon he called for assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from whom he received a generous dole. Observing that the remote neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations, Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a housebreaker. They were studying the dining-room silver when they were disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the sleepers above. The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them!

Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid psychology rather than of painting. After drifting from the stream of social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main sewer. This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform. To his other old friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few young painters were more successful. Any one curious enough to study his pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated life to prey upon his genius. He had not sufficient strength to keep the two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in doing. At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed himself in his own sordid way. When I had the pleasure of seeing him last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively alcoholic. Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him. This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing eyes.

By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value. He poured out a quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece. They are repulsive and ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid achievements. Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings. The originals are unique of their kind. It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative: ‘Sappho,’ ‘Antinous,’ ‘Amor Sacramentum.’ One of the finest, ‘Love dying from the breath of Lust,’ of which also he painted a picture, became quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of it. Another, of ‘Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child’s Party,’ is particularly fascinating. To the present generation his work is perhaps too ‘literary,’ and his technique is by no means faultless; but the slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one, however exotic. The faceless head and the headless body of shivering models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon’s designs. His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure in tone, and rich without being garish. We need not try to frighten ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings. His whole art is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite adjectives. His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters rather than collectors—to those who ask that a drawing or a picture should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist. Subject with him triumphs over drawing. He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during the sixties, when, as some one said, ‘every one was a great artist,’ he showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship. His pictures are less fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are allegorical, or, as is too often the case, odd in sentiment. He is apparently never concerned with what are called ‘problems,’ the articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame. Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of oil. His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been painted in tempera, the technique of which was not then understood. Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how to paint in oil. It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American.

It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual—a strange contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera. How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist! I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend of M. Degas—Gustave Moreau—Solomon had much in common, but the colour of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For poor Solomon there was no place in life. Casting reality aside, he stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius. Perhaps on the Paris boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la PurÉe, he might have enjoyed a distinct artistic individuality. Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular cafÉ. Mr. George Moore might have written about him. But in respectable London he was quite impossible. In the temple of Art, which is less Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his niche. To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine.

(1905.)