Information

Simeon Solomon was a friend and associate of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, who is said to have described him as 'the greatest artist of us all: we are all schoolboys compared with you.' Solomon enjoyed early success but his career was effectively destroyed in 1873 when his homosexuality became public knowledge.In 'Night and Sleep' Solomon symbolically expressed Sleep as a male head with poppies and wings at the brow to the left, and Night as a watchful yet sad female head whose drapery gently enfolds the two. This work is typical of the intensely personal, visionary chalk drawings which Solomon produced during his later years.The imagery of these works often derives from Solomon's prose poem, 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep.' In this case the figures of Night and Sleep recall this passage from the poem:'Again I raised my eyes, and saw her [Night] who had lately been revealed to us receiving the passing breath of Day; with unrelaxing gaze, and eyes from whose depths comes forth all gentleness, she watched Sleep, her beloved son; and she, to whom all was an open scroll, wept when she looked upon him whose heart was as the heart of a child.'

  • Presented by Cecil F. Crofton, 1908.
  • © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Makers

Association Artist Organisation
Artist Simeon Solomon -

Inscriptions

Type Position(s) Method Date(s) Notes
SS 1888
Monogram bottom left Handwritten 1888
 
NIGHT AND SLEEP
Title bottom centre Handwritten 1888 Blue and red chalk
 

Exhibitions

Catalogue No. Venue Date(s)
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings
- Lichfield 1961-05 - 1961-06
 
Solomon: A Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)
68 Geffrye Museum, London 1985-11-08 - 1985-12-31
68 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 1986-01-18 - 1986-03-09
 
Androgyn: Sehnsucht nach Vollkommenheit
- Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin 1986-11-17 - 1987-01-04
- Kunstverein, Hanover 1987-02-07 - 1987-04-12
 
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England
113 Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington 1995-03-09 - 1995-05-07
113 Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio 1995-05-27 - 1995-07-16
113 Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington 1995-08-11 - 1995-10-15
113 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 1995-11-04 - 1996-01-02
113 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia 1996-01-23 - 1996-04-10
113 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 1996-05-25 - 1996-09-29
 
Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites
135 Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 2005-10-01 - 2006-01-15
135 Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 2006-03-09 - 2006-06-18
135 Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art 2006-09-11 - 2006-11-26
 

Literature

Author(s) Date(s) Publisher Pages
City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Illustrated Catalogue (with descriptive notes) of the Permanent Collection of Paintings in the Art Gallery and in Aston Hall and elsewhere
1909 - no. 561.
 
The Image of the Androgyne in the Nineteenth Century
A. J. L. Busst 1967 Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London pp. 50-51.
 
The Vision of Simeon Solomon
Simon Reynolds 1984 Catalpa Press Ltd., Stroud, Glos pl. 71.
 
Solomon: A Family of Painters: Abraham Solomon (1823-1862), Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)
Jeffery Daniels 1985 Inner London Education Authority pp. 77-78.
 
British Romantic Painting
Raymond Lister 1989 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge no. 75.
 
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England
Stephen Wildman 1995 Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia p. 320.
 
Evelyn Pickering de Morgan and the Allegorical Body
Elise Lawton Smith 2002 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, N.J. and Associated University Presses, London fig. 63, p. 138; p. 135.
 
Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites
Colin Cruise 2005 Merrell, London and New York p. 170.

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