Carrying the Scrolls of the Law

Simeon Solomon attended the Royal Academy in London at age fifteen and was the youngest artist whose work was ever shown there. Early in his career, he painted Old Testament and Jewish religious subjects. Inspired by the Italian Renaissance, Solomon increasingly turned to religious mystical subjects and classical pagan themes painted in a pre-Raphaelite style. Much of Solomon’s work was homoerotic, and in 1871 his prose poem on the theme of same-sex male love, “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep,” was attacked. His arrest and conviction for gross indecency in 1873 destroyed Solomon’s career and led to years of social condemnation, alcoholism, and poverty.