Information
This drawing was made when Solomon was working on 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep', and its imagery is closely linked with the text: all of the figures seen here feature in Solomon's narrative. From left to right they can be identified as Sleep, Memory (shown listening to the sounds in a sea shell), Eternal Silence, Love, Pleasure, Passion and finally, Death who extinguishes a burning torch.Solomon saw the figures of Pleasure and Passion as counterparts of one another. The former, smiling and 'naked but guileless', was seen by him as a positive figure representing fulfilling, intense though short-lived pleasure 'even as sweet notes heard once but lost for ever.' Her counterpart, Passion, weeping and with her hair transformed into tormenting snakes, represents unfulfilled desire turned to bitter anguish and frustration: 'her wasted beauty preyed upon itself; her face was whitened with pale fires, a hollow image of unappeased desire ... '
- Presented by the Alfred Leadbeater Bequest Fund, 1928.
- © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Makers
Association |
Artist |
Organisation |
Artist |
Simeon Solomon |
- |
Inscriptions
Type |
Position(s) |
Method |
Date(s) |
Notes |
SS 1870 |
Monogram |
bottom right |
Handwritten |
1870 |
|
|
SOMNUS MEMORIA MORPHEUS AMOR VOLUPTAS LIBIDO MORS |
Text |
below image |
Handwritten |
1870 |
|
|
Exhibitions
Catalogue No. |
Venue |
Date(s) |
Seventh General Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings |
496 |
Dudley Gallery, London |
1871 - 1871 |
|
Androgyn: Sehnsucht nach Vollkommenheit |
- |
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin |
1986-11-17 - 1987-01-04 |
- |
Kunstverein, Hanover |
1987-02-07 - 1987-04-12 |
|
Dei ed Eroi |
44 |
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy |
1995-03-15 - 1995-05-30 |
|
- |
- |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Gallery 17 |
1995-06 - 1995-09-30 |
- |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Gallery 14 |
2002-03-02 - 2002-06-23 |
|
- |
- |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Gallery 17 |
1995-06 - 1995-09-30 |
- |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Gallery 14 |
2002-03-02 - 2002-06-23 |
|
Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites |
76 |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery |
2005-10-01 - 2006-01-15 |
76 |
Museum Villa Stuck, Munich |
2006-03-09 - 2006-06-18 |
|
Literature
Author(s) |
Date(s) |
Publisher |
Pages |
The Image of the Androgyne in the Nineteenth Century |
A. J. L. Busst |
1967 |
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London |
pp. 50-51. |
|
Simeon Solomon and Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
Steven Kolsteren |
May 1982 |
- |
fig. 4; p. 40. |
|
The Life and Work of Simeon Solomon 1840-1905 |
Gayle Seymour |
1986 |
University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan |
fig. 184, p. 407; pp. 195-196. |
|
Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites |
Colin Cruise |
2005 |
Merrell, London and New York |
p. 122. |
Related work & resources
Discuss this work
|
The figures in this drawing are similar in spirit to the 'ignudi' on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It is hard to point to specific parallels - and Michelangelo's nudes are far more animated than languorous figures drawn by Solomon. There does seem however to be a clear relationship between Sleep, on the left of Solomon's drawing, and the 'ignudo' Michelangelo painted above and to the left of the Cumaean Sibyl.