Simeon Solomon 1840-1905

Possibly Royal Academy, 1871, no.485;
London, Belgrave Gallery, Jewish Artists of Great Britain, 1978, no.5 (as ‘Carrying the Scrolls’)

Art Journal, 1871, p.177;
Lionel Lambourne, ‘Abraham Solomon, Painter of Fashion, and Simeon Solomon, Decadent Artist’, reprinted from The Jewish Historical Society of England – Transactions, Session 1962-1967, Vol.XXI, 1968, pp.274-86, repr. fig.14;
Solomon – A Family of Painters, Geffrye Museum, London, and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 1985-6, p.72

This is an important painting by the distinguished Jewish artist Simeon Solomon. The subject is taken from Jewish religious ritual, and therefore makes a connection with the artist’s roots in the orthodox Jewish community of London’s East End (where he had been the youngest of eight children of a hatter). The painting comes from the period when the artist was at his most ambitious – also treating as he did literary, historical and mythological subjects – and working on a large scale in oil. This was the phase of his career when he gained particular sophistication as a consequence of contact with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.

The present painting was a reworking of a watercolour version of the subject which Solomon painted in Rome in 1867. In an unpublished letter to his friend Charles Algernon Swinburne Solomon claimed that the present painting represented a deliberate return to his earlier Hebraic style, and as such was respectful of his family’s faith and culture. In emphasising this point, Solomon was perhaps seeking to distinguish between spiritual or religious works of the present type and figure subjects of a more voluptuous and morally uncertain nature. The artist may even have regretted the direction that his work had taken, under the influence of Swinburne himself, and was making a conscious effort to revert to more wholesome imagery.

Nonetheless, a sensuous tinge was detected in the various versions of the present subject. In them, the artist approached more closely to the male figure, so as to show the physiognomy of the young man and to describe the state of physical rapture that he seems to be experiencing. The watercolour version of the subject (Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester) was shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1870. Two oil versions followed in about 1870, the present painting and another now in Baroda Art Gallery, India. One of these two was shown at the Royal Academy a year later. On that occasion the reviewer of the Art Journal  applauded a work ‘after his usual impressive, spiritual, and mystic manner, [which was] another version of the Jewish Rabbi, who appeared in the Dudley’ (Art Journal, 1871, p.177).

The present painting may have been intended as a counterpart to a work entitled The Mystery of Faith, of 1870, (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) in which a Catholic priest is seen holding the Host at Mass. Together the two pictures demonstrate Solomon’s fascination with religious ritual of whatever kind, even when accompanied by what Lambourne called ‘certain obtrusive, decadent overtones’ (see LITERATURE; p.282). It must also be observed that by this time, Solomon was interested in the conduct of religious ceremony for its own sake, as a spectacle and as an opportunity for the observation of expressions of emotion, rather than because of any personal sincerity of faith – a point demonstrated by his capacity to base his imagery on either Judaism or Catholicism, without any particular allegiance to the former.
CSN