Simeon Solomon, Infamous Jewish Pre-Raphaelite

On the 14^th of August 1905, English Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon died in London. He is famous for his dreamy paintings with subjects which often included scenes from the Hebrew Bible and genre paintings depicting Jewish life and rituals. Infamously, in 1873, at the age of 32, his career was cut short when he was arrested in a public urinal at Stratford Place Mews, off Oxford Street, in London and charged with attempting to commit sodomy. “He was tried and condemned to eighteen months’ imprisonment with light labour, later commuted to six weeks in the Clerkenwell House of Correction and a £100 fine, for ‘gross indecency’. Unlike Oscar Wilde twenty years later, who managed to maintain a public presence despite the infamy, Solomon was eclipsed by this judgment, even though it attracted no press attention. His closest friends, including Rossetti and Swinburne, ostracised him, and he lived…