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Simeon |
"The Fourth General Exhibition of Water-colour Drawings. Dudley Gallery." The Art-Journal, 1 March 1868: 45.
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Eccentricity has always distinguished the Dudley Gallery. And what can be more singular and abnormal than the productions—clever withal—of Simeon Solomon, Spencer Stanhope, C. P. Slocombe, C. Rossiter, A. B. Donaldson, and H. E. Wooldridge? Solomon is a genius of eccentricity, he can do nothing like other people, and in being exclusively like himself, he becomes unlike to nature. As for choice of subject, most religions of the world have struck by turns the painter’s fantastic and splendour-loving fancy. On the present occasion ‘Bacchus,’ ‘A Patriarch of the Eastern Church,’ and ‘Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun,’ obtain from the painter about equal favour, whether as to ritual, robes, or anatomies. The latter, however, would not be recognized by the College of Surgeons. ‘Bacchus’ is a sentimentalist of rather weak constitution; he drinks mead, possibly sugar and water, certainly not wine. The idea is that the young fellow is the inspirer of Art and Poetry, the beloved of the Muses; and the painter, it must be confessed, has thrown over his work a certain aroma of poetry and colour. The background is in scale and management false, yet on the whole the picture possesses, as we have said, unmistakable signs of genius, only run a little mad. ... Opposed to the classic is the mediaeval; each is found in ultra form in the Dudley Gallery. Indeed, there are artists, such, for example, as Simeon Solomon, who are divided equally between the two opinions, and thus on either horn of the dilemma they fall far short of nature. ... The works of Miss Solomon are always clever and frequently singular; ‘Memories’ recall, indeed, past memories of the lady’s pictures in intensity of colour, earnest striving for a meaning, and general eccentricity of treatment.