Yesterday my colleagues at Out Stories Bristol hosted a superb talk by Frank Vigon on the subject of the unjustly forgotten Pre-Raphaelite artist, Simeon Solomon. Solomon was Jewish, and therefore at a huge disadvantage to start with in Victorian society. However, he was also a genius, and therefore despite his Jewishness he was welcomed into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Or at least he was until 1873, when he was convicted of “attempted buggery”, after which Victorian society, and his artist colleagues in particular, dropped him like a stone.

The fact that Solomon was gay could easily have been discerned years before thanks to his penchant for painting pretty boys, lesbian scenes, and love triangles involving two men and a woman. Given his subject matter, I wondered if he had ever painted a portrait of someone like Stella Boulton. I asked Frank, and he said he didn’t know of one, but that didn’t mean it did not exist. When I got home I stared searching online. I had no luck with Stella, but I discovered that Solomon had done a magnificent watercolor of the transsexual Roman emperor, Elagabalus. The painting’s title says it shows Elagabalus as High Priest of the Sun (she was also known as Heliogabalus), but I am sure that most people looking at the picture would assume it shows a woman. The whims of emperors are, of course, notoriously difficult to predict, but I suspect she would have liked it.

At any rate, other people liked it. According to Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones described it as one of Solomon’s finest works. If I have understood the Christies website correctly, the painting last sold to a private collector for £26k. However, there are many online stores offering fine art prints, so I guess I will have to get myself one. Anyone out there got experience of using such companies and would like to recommend one?

I’ll write some more about Simeon Solomon tomorrow.