After working like a machine this morning at the Courtauld library, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon at the V&A, to check out the long-awaited (on my part) exhibition, The Cult of Beauty.
Before I say anything bad about it, I have to admit the fact that one of the main reasons I’ve been anticipating it so much is that I knew for a fact that Simeon Solomon’s The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love (pictured) would be on display, and since it’s one of the images I’ll be discussing at length in my dissertation, I was really looking forward to seeing it in the flesh.
Simeon Solomon - 'The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love', 1865
Having found out that this drawing would be featured in the exhibition, I pretty much convinced myself that there would be more Solomons on display, since it maps out the course of the Aesthetic movement and Solomon played a huge part in that. This pre-determined attitude was a bad idea, and ultimately led to my disappointment.
The exhibition itself is thorough, varied and informative. It aims to introduce the concept of Art for Art’s Sake and what it entails, so naturally the majority of paintings on display are the aesthetic endeavours of artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Albert Moore, Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. Not only does it show the developments in painting, but it also has a vast array of ‘Art Furniture’, consisting of beautifully designed and decorated cabinets, chests and chairs, as well as some examples of the increasingly popular blue and white china, book illustrations, jewellery, photography, and something I didn’t expect to see, but perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised about (seeing as this is the V&A), a delightful array of Aesthete costumes, including a suit very similar to the one worn by Oscar Wilde during a photo shoot with Napoleon Sarony (pictured). Furthermore, Frederick Leyland’s ‘Peacock Room’ – one of the only examples of Aesthetic interiors to have been preserved, is recreated in a large circular installation, with projectors displaying a video loop of various angles of the room, gradually highlighting and enlarging various features. It was a bizarre experience at first, but once the eyes adjust, it was interesting and somewhat enjoyable. In addition to all of this, several rooms had audio loops which play various poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne and others being read aloud. Interesting as an effect, but somewhat distracting.
Oscar Wilde, photographed by Napoleon Sarony, 1882
I can’t really fault the exhibition itself. As I said, it fulfils its aims and provides a thorough and varied insight into the development of the Aesthetic movement and lifestyle, along with its trends. What bothered me was the downplay of Simeon Solomon’s role in this movement. Perhaps I am a little biased, because I have dedicated the last few months to thoroughly researching Solomon’s life and works, but I felt that he deserved a little more prominence in this exhibition. He was a close associate of Rossetti and Swinburne, both of whom play a large role in this display, and yet his contribution is completely overlooked. When I did happen upon the aforementioned drawing, I felt a little flutter of excitement, because it is a sad fact that Solomon’s works are very rarely on display to the public and this drawing is little known at all. The majority of his works which still survive (and I hate to report that many of them are now lost) are in private collections and the very few owned by public galleries are rarely on display. In this exhibition which both celebrates and illustrates the development of Aestheticism, I expected more. I had at least hoped that it would attempt to bring Solomon out of the shadows, but alas I was dismayed when I read the label accompanying the drawing. It hardly said anything about Solomon as an artist, and it completely overlooked his overall contribution to the beginning of the movement in the 1860s. Instead, the unknowing member of the public is presented with a short note about some little known Jewish painter who was an acquaintance of the bigwigs and who did a drawing with homoerotic connotations before being arrested for indecency and disappearing off the face of the planet. No, I’m not denying that this story is true, but this view of Solomon is at least thirty years old and fundamentally redundant. Much has been written about him since the 1980s and he is slowly coming back into the forefront with the ever-expanding queer theory. I looked on in horror as I watched person after person glance at the drawing, read the label, tug their friend’s sleeve and whisper something along the lines of, ‘oh did you read that? He got arrested like Oscar Wilde!’ or, ‘hmm, that seems a little out of place.’
But do you know what? That last comment actually has some merit. YES, it is out of place. Why on earth did the curator of this exhibition choose to introduce the public to Simeon Solomon through a privately circulated and little-known image such as this? To present him as ‘the gay one who got into trouble’. Oh yes, and to make use of a drawing which is constantly kept in their archive and probably on rotation to see the light of day. It is true that currently Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery are also showing a selection of Solomon’s works in the exhibition, The Poetry of Drawing which does a much better job of portraying Solomon for the artistic genius he was hailed as by the press throughout the 1860s. But he has produced plenty of paintings which could have better illustrated his contribution to the movement in this show. Either the curators of this exhibition wanted Solomon in it so badly that they went with the only works available to them, no matter how badly chosen or irrelevant to the aims of the exhibition, or they didn’t try at all.
Despite all this, I am happy to say that I had a very pleasant surprise at the very end. After trailing through rooms full of furniture, wallpaper designs and architectural drawings (I still don’t quite understand why they were there, apart from the fact that they were the by-product of a collaboration between Whistler and an architect called Godwin), resenting the overshadowing of poor neglected Solomon, I was greeted by an unexpected jewel. They may not have given the public a good first impression (if any impression) of Solomon in the second room, but in the final room they did him an ounce of justice by displaying one of his most beautiful paintings, The Sleepers and the One Who Watcheth (pictured).
Simeon Solomon - 'The Sleepers and the One Who Watcheth', 1871
This was a very welcome surprise, as this painting usually lives in Warwick, at the Leamington Spa Gallery and as much as I’ve been wanting to see it in the flesh, I haven’t been able to really justify a day trip to Warwick just to see one painting. I had no idea that it had been lent to the V&A for this exhibition, and for those final ten or fifteen minutes of my visit (spent standing before it in wonder), I felt that excitement I had at the beginning of the afternoon, before it had drained away along with Solomon’s chance of a revival at the V&A. So although I spent a large part of the exhibition feeling bitter, I’m glad to say I left feeling a little better about it all.
There were some other nice surprises that I hadn’t expected to see there, like the cartoons by George du Maurier satirising the Aesthete, which I have been trying to order from the British Library all to no avail, being given the explanation: ‘Item temporarily unavailable’. At least this now makes sense.
All in all it was an afternoon filled with mixed feelings, but I’m trying not to be too bitter about it all. Solomon made a small comeback at the end, and I can’t really complain that he’s never going to be a household name. He’s had some time in the limelight over the last few years, thanks to Colin Cruise’s 2005-06 exhibition, Love Revealed. Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites, also at the BMAG. I can’t deny the fact that Solomon’s disgrace following his arrest in 1873 was the sole cause of his name fading into obscurity. Well, that and the fact that afterwards he simply refused to attempt to re-enter respectable society. It is true that there has been a surge of research on him over the last few decades and I feel confident that this research will continue, mainly because I fully intend to be part of it.
I haven’t gone into too much detail about Solomon’s life and works here, because I’m already writing a dissertation about it. If by any chance I’ve managed to spark your curiosity about him though, and I really hope I have, all the information you could possibly need can be found here.
