SIMEON SOLOMON | DAMON AND AGLAE

Alexander Henderson, Lord Faringdon, Buscot Park, Oxfordshire (until circa 1930, attributed to Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

Sale: Sotheby's, London, October 24, 1978, lot 11, illustrated

Simon Reynolds, The Vision of Simeon Solomon, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1984, p. 25

Gayle Marie Seymour, "The Life and Work of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)," Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Santa Barbara, 1986, p. 121-22, illustrated p. 353

Thaïs E. Morgan, "Perverse Male Bodies: Simeon Solomon and Algernon Charles Swinburne," Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures, Peter Horne and Reina Lewis, eds., London, 1996, n.p.

Colin Cruise, Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites, Birmingham, 2005, p. 184

London, Royal Academy, 1866, no. 555

Simeon Solomon, an English painter of Jewish descent who associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, found inspiration for his oeuvre in mythology and the classical world. Damon and Aglae is charged with emotion between two lovers, but the narrative is not explicit and the names of the figures, though inspired from Antiquity, do not point to a clear story. The background is indistinct and fades away in contrast to the intense red and orange of the lovers’ costumes, placing the focus on their embrace and the tension in this moment.

When Damon and Aglae was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1866, it was accompanied by a poem by the controversial lyric poet and Aesthete Algernon Charles Swinburne. The poem, entitled Erotion, spoke of the transience of human love and was partially published in the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue alongside the painting:

'Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,

love, to lay down fear at love’s fair feet;

shall not some fiery memory of his breath

Lie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;

Love me not more, but love my love of thee.

Love where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,

One thing I can, and one love cannot—die.'