Neal Auction 2012

48 171. Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905) , “Memory”, 1890, red chalk on cream-colored wove paper without watermark, signed in monogram and dated lower right, 14 1/4 x 12 1/8 in., in modern corner-mounts. $4000/6000 Provenance: Durlacher Brothers, New York; Robert L. Isaacson, 1963; James R. Lamantia Jr., New Orleans and New York. Published: Curtis G. Coley, ed., The Pre-Raphaelites: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Their Associates, Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 16 February-22 March 1964, and Gallery of Modern Art, New York, 27 April-31 May 1964, no. 83, illustrated. Note: As noted apropos of the other drawing by Solomon in this catalogue, the Profile Head of 1905, this precocious artist met Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) in 1858, and Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) shortly after; their combined influence led Solomon into increasingly dangerous dissolution, and a personal crisis in 1873 from which he never fully recovered (though Burne-Jones later called him “the greatest artist of us all”). This fine drawing does clearly demonstrate, though, the tenderness and subtlety which he could occasionally command, even in the second phase of his life. His dreamy, introspective personification of “Memory” is rendered in delicate, evanescent red chalk, in which the pensive head is outlined against twin sprigs of laurel, as a symbol of her victorious, and ultimately triumphant, retrospection. James Lamantia, in his commentary to the publication of this beautiful sheet in 1964, compared its 172. Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905) , “Profile Head of a Saint or Angel”, 1905, black chalk and pastel, signed in monogram and dated lower right, inscribed “Simeon Solomon” en verso, on beige wove paper, watermarked by J. What[man], 13 15/16 in. x 20 1/2 in., with small mended tear at left center. $2000/3000 Provenance: James R. Lamantia, Jr. New Orleans and New York. Note: The artist of this fine sheet was unusually precocious, taking his first academic training at age twelve, and entering the Royal Academy Schools at sixteen. Through the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Solomon became enamored of the fashionable Pre-Raphaelite style. His artist sister Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886) encouraged his deep Hebraic spirituality. In the mid- 1860s he came under the profound influence of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898), who particularly affected his technique of drawing; he began painting seductive mythological subjects from the classical repertory, which enjoyed an enormous success. He became intimately associated with Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, Albert Moore, and William Morris; but personal problems beginning in 1873 caused his work and his health to deteriorate, and much of his later work does not match the quality of his earlier output. This imposing sheet— drawn in the last year of his troubled life—is clearly an exception, testifying that in this haunting image Solomon had more than regained his original power and inspiration. Reference: Simon Reynolds, “Simeon Solomon,” Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., London, 1996, 34 vols., vol. 29, pp. 47-48. impressionistic technique to that of an exact contemporary of Solomon’s in France, Odilon Redon (1840-1916); but in actual fact the closer analogy for this particularly personal use of red chalk is in the drawings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), especially in such a haunting image as his Portrait of Marguerite of c. 1870. Notes: Christopher Wood, The Pre-Raphaelites, New York, 1994, pp. 130-134; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Judith Brodie, Drawings from the O’Neal Collection, Washington, 1993, cover, and pp. 84-85, no. 53; Elisabeth Kashey, 19th C. European Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, summer exhibition, Shepherd & Derom Galleries, New York, 2001, no. 17 ( Marguerite ), illustrated. 171 172