Simeon Solomon: The Artist Who Awakened Queer Desire In The Victorian Era

We all think of the Victorian era as a time of technological advances and cultural progress. Queen Victoria herself was a great promoter of the arts and encouraged its development. It’s easy to let ourselves turn a blind eye when thinking about this time as a highly revolutionary period. Together with all these improvements, there was a huge setback when it came to morality and what society thought to be correct and valid. It was a time of social restriction where people were constantly persecuted for their behavior and public indecency was on the official agenda. So here is the main dilemma of this particular era: how did artists show their ideas in this restricted, yet supportive time?

Here’s where wit played a vital role. While many surrendered to the social norms of Victorian times, others used these rules to hide their real artistic visions. One great example is Simeon Solomon, who used the established themes and norms to portray homoerotic experiences and ideas. As a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the usage of myths and ancient stories were the perfect set for his revolutionary visions.

Most of his work portrays religious stories and captures Jewish everyday life. However, he always added queer elements to represent his own individual experience. For instance, in Queer Difficulty in Art and Poetry, it’s said that he even reinterpreted the famous biblical passage Song of Songs by changing the normal conceptions of love and desire in his prose version. Here, he doesn’t really focus only on physical love, but on the concept itself, which allowed him to express without any boundaries. By adapting these stories, he was able to explore queer sexuality and desires without being judged or prosecuted.

He became a very important artist of the time and even exhibited his paintings at some of the most prestigious galleries of the time. His fame meant that many commissioned him with paintings for their private collections, giving him the opportunity to portray more explicit homoerotic scenes. However, most of his mainstream pieces had bold elements of, what were then forbidden, relationships codified through the stories of important myths.

Of course, people weren’t that naive to not realize what was going on in his paintings. This erupted into a huge controversy when some critics signaled his work as being feminine, not manly enough, decadent, and other terms that commented on his portrayal of sexuality. However, the society of the time was not worried about this. They ignored these adjectives as long as the painting showed an ambiguity or if these “homosexual” desires were only implied. Most of his paintings included “effeminate or androgynous young male nudes” that could easily be explained as part of the story.

As Clare Barlow, curator at the Tate Museum states: “Even works which, to the modern viewer, look blatantly homoerotic, could be respectably contained within the framework of the classical male nude, the ideal of Hellenic youthful beauty, or celebration of noble male friendship. Such narratives ‘veiled the potential homoeroticism of the works.’”

Of course, he wouldn’t be able to get away with it forever. In 1873, both his luck and his successful career were over. That year he was caught engaging in sexual activity with a man in a public place, so obviously, he was taken to the police where he was charged with “attempted buggery” and fined £100. Fortunately, on that occasion, they let him go. However, the next year, he was arrested for “indecent touching” in Paris and was sent to jail for three months.

Although 10 years had passed since the abolition of the death penalty over sodomy charges, it was still considered a serious crime. While Solomon wasn’t prosecuted for his art because there was no real evidence of homoeroticism, being caught twice for the same “crime” got him a three-month sentence at prison. After this moment, his life went on a downward spiral.

He spent many years in mental asylums, had a perpetual battle with alcoholism, and lived the rest of his life in extreme poverty. The skillful famous artist that once drank from the waters of fame and wealth found himself living a miserable life for being true to his own sexuality.

As we all know, misery and poverty aren’t impediments for many artists, so even in that state, he continued to create his beautiful and daring paintings until the end of his life.

Read more:

The Life And Times Of Gender Fluid Citizens Of Victorian England