brother, Abraham, became a
successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and
'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the
Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success
some of Millais's pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at
the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in
Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate
friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common,
though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like
Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial
and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic
moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the
Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to
have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us
all.' Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white
draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period
famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and
drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr.
Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian
collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter
Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in
the _Greek Studies_ will be found a graceful reference to the 'young
Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to
the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much.

In a short-lived magazine, the _Dark Blue_, of July 1871, may be found a
characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, _A
Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, his only literary work, now a great
rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most
interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the first years
of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high
imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work
long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant
points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred
Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance
of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.' It would be difficult to
add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to