SIMEON SOLOMON
(1840-1905)

 

Coptic Baptismal Procession

1865

watercolour, bodycolour and

gum arabic on paper

26.5 x 42.4 cm

inscribed: monogram, ‘65

P.430

One of several illustrations that Solomon, who never visited Egypt, made for Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt, 1865.     

Lady Duff Gordon was born in 1821 but, suffering from tuberculosis, went to Egypt for her health in 1862 and died there seven years later. Copts are descendants of the Egyptian Christians who did not convert to Islam when the Arabs conquered Egypt in the 7^th century A.D.

The baptismal procession is described by Lady Duff Gordon in a letter of 21 May 1863 following a visit to a new Coptic church in Cairo. There she witnessed the priest in a black robe leading the procession with

two young ecclesiastics in yellow satin copes (contrasting queerly with the familiar tarboosh of common life on their heads), these carried little babies and huge wax tapers, each a baby and a taper….A lot of closely veiled women stood on one side in the aisle, and among them the mothers of the babies who received them from the men in yellow copes at the end of the ceremony.

(from a letter to Mrs Austin, 21 May 1863, Cairo).

The painting bears strong compositional similarities to the drawing  Carrying the Scrolls of the Law from the Jewish Ceremonies Series, 1862, published as photographs by Coundall, Downes & Co. 

A Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator and the younger brother of Abraham and Rebecca. Solomon trained at the  R.A. Schools. Brilliantly precocious, he produced most of his best work in the 1860s including illustrations for Dalziel’s Bible and many drawings of Jewish life and ritual. He met ROSSETTI, BURNE-JONES, Pater and Swinburne. After being arrested in 1873 for his homosexuality, he became a social outlaw. His death was due to chronic alcoholism.    

EJ/JM

PROVENANCE: David Gould; Maas Gallery, from whom purchased by Gallery, October 1962.

REFERENCES: R. Burman (ed.), From Prodigy to Outcast Simeon Solomon – Pre Raphaelite Artist, 2001, p.19, repr.p.18; See: K. Frank, Lucie Duff Gordon: A Passage to Egypt, 1994.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.