Lot Essay
Like so much of Solomon's early work, the picture is inspired by the Old Testament, taking as its subject the well-known story in the third chapter of the Book of Daniel which described how three young Jews, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, were cast into a furnace for refusing to worship a golden image set up by Nebuchadnezzar. To the King's astonishment, they escape unharmed, being protected by an angel:
Then Nebuchadnezzar ... rose up in haste, and spake, and
said unto his councellors, Did not we cast three men bound
into the midst of the fire? They answered and said, lo, I
see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and
they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the
Son of God
Although dated October ('10') 1863, the picture was not exhibited until 1870 when it appeared at the Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, the Dudley had held annual exhibitions of modern watercolours since 1865, and Solomon was one of a number of younger Pre-Raphaelite or 'aesthetic' painters who supported it. Others were his friend Henry Holiday and the group of Burne-Jones Followers - Walter Crane, Edward Clifford, Robert Bateman, A.S. Coke, etc - who were dubbed by hostile critics the 'Poetry without Grammar School'. The Dudley was in fact the most important forum for 'aesthetic' values before the advent of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877.
The picture shows Solomon's early watercolour technique at its most accomplished and refined, and is comparable in this respect to the exquisite Sappho and Erinna (Tate Gallery), painted a year later (Reynolds, op. cit., pl. 32). His watercolour technique at this date was very similar to that of Burne-Jones, with whom he was on close terms, but he tended to handle the medium with more finesse.
It has often been said that the figure on the right (Abednego?) is a likeness of Solomon himself, while that on the left is modelled from his friend Swinburne and that of the angel from his sister Rebecca. However, as Lionel Lambourne pointed out in the catalogue of the 1985 exhibition, 'there is no evidence to support this assumption'. The figures should rather be seen as conforming to types which the artist repeated time and again, and which clearly appealed to his well-defined sense of beauty
Then Nebuchadnezzar ... rose up in haste, and spake, and
said unto his councellors, Did not we cast three men bound
into the midst of the fire? They answered and said, lo, I
see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and
they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the
Son of God
Although dated October ('10') 1863, the picture was not exhibited until 1870 when it appeared at the Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, the Dudley had held annual exhibitions of modern watercolours since 1865, and Solomon was one of a number of younger Pre-Raphaelite or 'aesthetic' painters who supported it. Others were his friend Henry Holiday and the group of Burne-Jones Followers - Walter Crane, Edward Clifford, Robert Bateman, A.S. Coke, etc - who were dubbed by hostile critics the 'Poetry without Grammar School'. The Dudley was in fact the most important forum for 'aesthetic' values before the advent of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877.
The picture shows Solomon's early watercolour technique at its most accomplished and refined, and is comparable in this respect to the exquisite Sappho and Erinna (Tate Gallery), painted a year later (Reynolds, op. cit., pl. 32). His watercolour technique at this date was very similar to that of Burne-Jones, with whom he was on close terms, but he tended to handle the medium with more finesse.
It has often been said that the figure on the right (Abednego?) is a likeness of Solomon himself, while that on the left is modelled from his friend Swinburne and that of the angel from his sister Rebecca. However, as Lionel Lambourne pointed out in the catalogue of the 1985 exhibition, 'there is no evidence to support this assumption'. The figures should rather be seen as conforming to types which the artist repeated time and again, and which clearly appealed to his well-defined sense of beauty