Lot Essay
REFERENCE:
Sidney Colvin, 'English Painters of the Present Day IV', Portfolio, March 1870
Simon Reynolds, The Vision of Simeon Solomon, 1985, pp. 19, 27, 102 (note 38), 176, and pl. 43
This fine watercolour, generally regarded as one of of Solomon's most sensuous treatments of the male nude, was painted in Rome in the winter of 1866 but completed and signed on his return to London. In 1868 it was exhibited at the Dudly Gallery, with some lines in the catalogue from William Morris's life and Death of Jason, published the year before:
By thee the unnamed smouldering fire
Within our hearts turns to desire,
Sweet, amorous, half-satisfied;
Through thee the doubtful years untried
Seem fair to us and fortunate,
In spite of death, in spite of fate.
The Dudlye had held annual exhibitions of watercolours inthe Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, since 1865, and many of the younger Pre-Raphaelite and 'aesthetic' painters supported it, including Solomon and his friend Henry Holiday, and the so-called 'Poetry without Grammar School' - Crane, Clifford, Bateman, A.S. Coke and others. It was an important forum for advanced artist ideas until the advent of the Grosvenor in 1877.
This was Solomon's third treatment of the theme of Bacchus. the first, dating from 1865, is not lost, but was mentioned by the artist in a letter to Swinburne in May 1871. The second is the well-known oil painting now in the Birmingham Art Gallery (no. 55 in the 1985 Solomon exhibition, repr. in cat.; see also Reynolds, op. cit., pl. 2). A head-and-shoulders rendering of the subject, it was exhibited at the royal Academy in 1867 and much admired by Walter Pater, who analysed the feelings it assured in his essay 'A study of Dionysus', published in his Greek Studies nine years later.
Both the Birmingham picture and the present watercolour reflect Solomon's study of the Old Masters during his visits to Italy in the mid-1860s, particularly Botticelli, Leonardo, Dodoma and Luini, artists whose work was becoming fashionable in 'aesthetic' circles and expressed the sexual ambiguity that appealed to him so strongly. One of the most influential images was a study by Sodoma in the Uffizi which Swinburne saw in 1864 and discussed in his important article 'Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence', published in the Fortnightly Review four years later. 'It is a beautiful and elaborate drawing', he wrote, 'partly coloured; a boy with full wavy curls, crowned with leaves, wearing a red dress banded gold and black and fringed with speckled fur; the large bright eyes and glad fresh lips animate the beauty of the face'. Solomon saw the drawing when he was in Florence in 1866, later enthusing about it in a letter to the Eton schoomaster Oscar Browning; and it clearly had an impact on his figures of Bacchus, with their 'wavy curls', wreaths of vino leaves, ad drapes of 'speckled fur'.
The Bacchus paintings were singled out for praise by Sidney Colvin in an aritcle he wrote on Solomon for The Portfolio in March 1870. Having expressed his reservations about those paintings in which the artist attempted a 'mystical union of Pagan and Christian symbolism', he continued: 'Far more admirable have been some purely Pagan studies, especially two of the Dionysiac kind, on equite early and one more recent, in which solid richness of execution and intensity of sentiment ... have been carried about as far as they could go'
Sidney Colvin, 'English Painters of the Present Day IV', Portfolio, March 1870
Simon Reynolds, The Vision of Simeon Solomon, 1985, pp. 19, 27, 102 (note 38), 176, and pl. 43
This fine watercolour, generally regarded as one of of Solomon's most sensuous treatments of the male nude, was painted in Rome in the winter of 1866 but completed and signed on his return to London. In 1868 it was exhibited at the Dudly Gallery, with some lines in the catalogue from William Morris's life and Death of Jason, published the year before:
By thee the unnamed smouldering fire
Within our hearts turns to desire,
Sweet, amorous, half-satisfied;
Through thee the doubtful years untried
Seem fair to us and fortunate,
In spite of death, in spite of fate.
The Dudlye had held annual exhibitions of watercolours inthe Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, since 1865, and many of the younger Pre-Raphaelite and 'aesthetic' painters supported it, including Solomon and his friend Henry Holiday, and the so-called 'Poetry without Grammar School' - Crane, Clifford, Bateman, A.S. Coke and others. It was an important forum for advanced artist ideas until the advent of the Grosvenor in 1877.
This was Solomon's third treatment of the theme of Bacchus. the first, dating from 1865, is not lost, but was mentioned by the artist in a letter to Swinburne in May 1871. The second is the well-known oil painting now in the Birmingham Art Gallery (no. 55 in the 1985 Solomon exhibition, repr. in cat.; see also Reynolds, op. cit., pl. 2). A head-and-shoulders rendering of the subject, it was exhibited at the royal Academy in 1867 and much admired by Walter Pater, who analysed the feelings it assured in his essay 'A study of Dionysus', published in his Greek Studies nine years later.
Both the Birmingham picture and the present watercolour reflect Solomon's study of the Old Masters during his visits to Italy in the mid-1860s, particularly Botticelli, Leonardo, Dodoma and Luini, artists whose work was becoming fashionable in 'aesthetic' circles and expressed the sexual ambiguity that appealed to him so strongly. One of the most influential images was a study by Sodoma in the Uffizi which Swinburne saw in 1864 and discussed in his important article 'Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence', published in the Fortnightly Review four years later. 'It is a beautiful and elaborate drawing', he wrote, 'partly coloured; a boy with full wavy curls, crowned with leaves, wearing a red dress banded gold and black and fringed with speckled fur; the large bright eyes and glad fresh lips animate the beauty of the face'. Solomon saw the drawing when he was in Florence in 1866, later enthusing about it in a letter to the Eton schoomaster Oscar Browning; and it clearly had an impact on his figures of Bacchus, with their 'wavy curls', wreaths of vino leaves, ad drapes of 'speckled fur'.
The Bacchus paintings were singled out for praise by Sidney Colvin in an aritcle he wrote on Solomon for The Portfolio in March 1870. Having expressed his reservations about those paintings in which the artist attempted a 'mystical union of Pagan and Christian symbolism', he continued: 'Far more admirable have been some purely Pagan studies, especially two of the Dionysiac kind, on equite early and one more recent, in which solid richness of execution and intensity of sentiment ... have been carried about as far as they could go'