Figure with Head Scarf

Simeon Solomon

1890–1905 · Watercolor and gouache (bodycolor) · Drawings and Prints

This androgynous figure may represent King David, the Old Testament figure whose love for Jonathan the artist saw as a legitimizing model for love between men. The style and iconography here respond to the artist's own 1871 prose poem, "A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep," where a narrator and his soul journey through a landscape in a dream state, experiencing visions that relate to forms and conditions of love. In a series of related late works, Solomon represented one or two heads in profile using a style that moves away from the Pre-Raphaelitism of Dante Gabriel Rossetti towards Symbolism.

Artist

Simeon Solomon

Date

1890–1905

Medium

Watercolor and gouache (bodycolor)

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Bequest of James David Draper and the Robert Isaacson Collection, 2020