Copyright © 2017 Natalie Pretzman. Some images mentioned within are unfortunately no longer available online.
Simeon Solomon is most widely known as a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a contemporary of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, and a painter of explicitly Jewish subject matter invoking his identity as both a Jew and an Englishman. Solomon has also garnered much acclaim for being one of the first major artists to include explicit depictions of homoeroticism in his works, reflecting his documented identity as a homosexual male. Previous scholarship minimally accounts for the small 1864 watercolor Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene as integral to Solomon’s building and expression of his own queer identity, maintaining that he self-identifies with the figure of Sappho. However, these accounts fail to explain this claim and do not seek to find the reason why Solomon felt such a kinship with a queer female writer, as opposed to a queer male figure. This paper proposes a few reasons as to why Solomon identified with Sappho and why he depicted her in the guises in which he did. As such, this essay will investigate not only the Sappho and Erinna watercolor, but also subsequent unfinished Sappho sketches produced the year after the watercolor, and will compare what I have termed the “Sappho series” with other artists’ images of Sappho from the nineteenth-century. I argue that Solomon’s Sappho is unique in the history of visual depictions of the ancient poetess, and will explore why it is thus so. Following this, I argue that a major reason why Solomon chose to depict Sappho and presumably self-identify with her to some extent is that this depiction allowed for a certain level of “masking” or “encoding” of his own queer identity, of which he found difficult, and probably impossible by society’s standards, to depict openly. Depicting a small, intimately scaled image of female homoeroticism and homosocial relations was infinitely more acceptable in Victorian society because the history of female social spaces as depicted in art was already an established genre of painting, whether it was via the domestic sphere or in the form of groups of women bathing together. Further, Sappho represented to many Classicists a dissolving of “heterosexualized” social structures: in Sappho and her amorous poetry there was no longer a hierarchical structure of possession and possessor, penetrated and penetrator, a lens through which queer relationships were and still are often erroneously viewed. Sappho, as will be shown, represented a certain queer equality that may have particularly appealed to Solomon.
Simeon Solomon made his debut at the Royal Academy exhibitions at the age of 18 in the year 1858. Born in 1840 to a fairly prominent Jewish family in London, Solomon was particularly sensitive to the changing and developing forms of identity in mid-nineteenth-century England. His father, a hat-maker, was the first Jew legally admitted to engage in official trade in London beginning in 1830, the first time a Jewish man was allowed to openly trade in the city since the exiling of Jews from London in the fifteenth-century. In 1858, the same year as Solomon’s Royal Academy exhibition, the first Jewish man was elected to the British Parliament. Solomon himself would become the first and most prominent Jewish artist in the nineteenth-century to make issue of his racial and religious heritage through the explicit depiction of Jewish and Old Testament Biblical themes in his paintings and sketches. Solomon scholar Colin Cruise argues that because of the growing and changing status of the Jewish community in London in the nineteenth-century, Solomon’s use of Jewish imagery was a way in which he was able to construct the outward and inward identity of a newly emancipated Jewish spirit. Much of his Jewish imagery is, however, imbued with a sense of melancholy and quiet sadness, perhaps feelings inspired by a wish to hold on to a quickly vanishing cultural past that was being overtaken by Solomon’s new identity as both a Jew and an Englishman. In consequence, it has been argued that much of Solomon’s imagery uses Biblical themes to express personal feelings of anxiety, isolation, and even shame in his identity, effectually a way in which he attempted to cope with and overcome anxieties about his identity. We might also view this imagery as not only a coping mechanism for his Jewish identity, but also as a way in which Solomon attempted to deal with the third aspect of his self: his status as a necessarily closeted homosexual male in conservative Victorian England.
In the 1860s, Simeon Solomon became associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. From then on, Solomon’s work can often be linked directly to the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics in the general treatment and positioning of his figures. Like many of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, Solomon produced decorative designs for interiors of domestic spaces and churches. It is likely that Solomon borrowed costumes for his models, and even shared the models themselves, with other PRB artists like Rossetti. Specifically, many of Solomon’s female figures bear resemblances to Jane Morris as she appears in the paintings of Rossetti.
During the mid-to-late 1860s, somewhat coinciding with his new relationship with the Pre-Raphaelites, Solomon turned away from Biblical subjects and began to focus mostly on Classical imagery of the ancient world. This change in subject coincides with the more general revival of the Classical in both British painting (with the work of Leighton, Watts, Pointer, Moore, and Alma-Tadema), and writing (with Walter Pater and Algernon Swinburne, among others). At some point Solomon befriended both Pater and Swinburne, and soon became heavily influenced in particular by Swinburne’s homoerotic writings on Sappho and other queer subjects from the ancient realm. According to Swinburne, Solomon was attracted to the “sublime reserve and balance of passion, which is peculiar to the Greeks.”
The main topic of this paper is one of the most intriguing works of art to emerge from Solomon’s early interest in Classical as well as queer subjects. In his 1864 watercolor Sappho and Erinna (In a Garden at Mytilene) (Figure 1), now in the Tate Gallery’s collections, Solomon depicts a gendered version of same-sex female/lesbian desire: Sappho, sitting on the right in creamy golden drapery takes on a dominant role and masculine appearance while she embraces her fellow poet Erinna, sitting on the left and draped in a rosy pink gown which slips off of her left shoulder, almost but not quite revealing her breast (which is covered by Sappho’s arm). As stated above, Sappho, in yellow, appears much more masculine in her facial features: she has a prominent chin, large eyes (or eyelids, which are all that are visible to the viewer as her gaze is heavy-lidded with desire), her thick neck with just the hint of an Adam’s Apple bump, and her generally much stronger and sculpted facial features. Erinna, in contrast, gazes dreamily out past the viewer even as Sappho, shown in profile, nuzzles her left cheek with her own. Erinna’s face is soft and overtly feminine, with a long, thin, patrician nose and small, gently lidded eyes, her petal-like lips pursed with a reciprocating desire. Sappho embraces her with both arms, the right wound around Erinna’s waist, and the left placed on Erinna’s shoulder, on top of which Erinna softly places her own hand. Erinna’s other arm hangs limply down into her lap, her fingers loosely bent. Both women wear no sandals, their bare feet and toes peeking almost scandalously out from the billowing silks they wear.
Flowers and petals matching the rose-color of Erinna’s gown litter the marble ground on which the women’s feet rest. They sit on a high carved, curving marble bench which embraces the pair even as they embrace one another. On the right is a pedestal on which a small statue of Aphrodite stands with outstretched, gesturing arm. Sappho’s poet’s lyre leans against the pedestal, and one of the poetesses has placed her parchment (which is covered in writing) and quill alongside a vessel of some sort atop the pedestal, at the feet of the Aphrodite. Perhaps this represents a love poem written by one of the women, an offering to the goddess of love herself. Atop the opposite end of the marble loveseat stands a very small deer; perched on the brick wall behind the bench are three birds, a mated pair of doves, and a blackbird. A hint of bright blue sky and the tops of Cyprus trees are shown beyond the bricked wall, and between the wall and marble bench grow a lush garden of tall bushes and shrubs. In the lower right corner, seemingly etched into the marble altar itself, is Simeon Solomon’s monogram “SS” in Greek epigraphy (Sigma Sigma) and the date of the watercolor’s production (“2.64”, or February 1864). As a final, nearly hidden touch, Solomon includes a tiny snake slithering out from behind the lyre leaning against the altar, approaching a fallen rose blossom that lies at Sappho’s bare left foot.
There is much apparent symbolism to be addressed in such a small image, as it measures only 33 x 38 centimeters (13 x 15 inches). In addressing first the animal symbolism, the miniature deer appears the most obvious detail, delicately balancing it’s thin legs on the curving top of the marble bench next to Erinna. Deers were often a symbol of the virginal goddess Artemis, herself having been surrounded by a homosocial group composed strictly of women. The deer may therefore drive home the idea that Sappho was intimately connected with an all-female group of poets and musicians in the sixth-century BCE. However, the deer can also symbolize Apollo, according to Colin Cruise, therefore bringing the figure of Sappho into concert with the God of the Arts and father of the Muses. The deer is perhaps meant to represent Sappho as a tenth Muse (as Plato titled her), or alternatively, showing that the amorous and erotic relationship of the two female poets was capable of bringing about greater and more energized depths of creation. On a more generalized level, the deer may merely represent a certain divine source of energy permeating the scene, whether it is creative energy, amorous and erotic energy, or both.
The deer may bring us to a more complex conclusion, however. According to the Tate Gallery’s text on the Sappho and Erinna watercolor, Plato considered Sappho to be the tenth Muse, as stated previously. We might find a connection, therefore, between the deer and the apparent dominant-submissive (or gendered) relationship of Erinna and Sappho. If Sappho is herself a Muse, and if it is indeed true that Erinna was not truly a contemporary of Sappho, but lived a few centuries later, then might Erinna have considered Sappho her own Muse? Sappho, whose works would most certainly have been known to Erinna as the most famous female writer in history? If Sappho is here meant to represent Erinna’s Muse, rather than her lover, we might say that she herself is a symbol of the creative energies that go into the creation of ancient women’s poetry. Erinna barely returns Sappho’s embrace, not for lack of desire, but because, perhaps, Sappho is not truly there physically, but instead spiritually and metaphorically. Perhaps it is Erinna’s, not Sappho’s, lyre and scroll that has been laid as offering before Aphrodite, who has sent to Erinna the spirit and muse of Sappho as reward. The Muse Sappho embraces Erinna in a dominant manner, imbuing her with the creative inspiration she has asked Aphrodite for. Aphrodite has sent her not a Muse of the God of the Arts, but a muse intimately related to the Goddess of love.
The above theory cannot, in any case, be proven. However, much scholarship has been done on the status of the Muses and Aphrodite within the circle of Sappho and her followers. Marilyn B. Skinner, in “Aphrodite Garlanded: Eros and Poetic Creativity in Sappho and Nossis”, claims that much ancient women’s poetry was directly inspired by eros, or amorous desire, something that belonged intrinsically to women because Aphrodite, the goddess and source of such desire, was herself female. According to Skinner’s analysis of Sappho’s fragmented texts, Sappho herself relied upon Aphrodite as her chosen Muse, rather than the nine Muses of Apollo, which Skinner argues belonged more to the masculine side of creativity. Aphrodite was integral to the formation of female homosocial and homoerotic spaces and relations, by which much female poetry was produced (including the poetry of both Sappho and Erinna, as well as the female Hellenistic poetess Nossis). The third-century BCE poetess Nossis asserted that Aphrodite, source and inspiration of the homoerotic desire which permeated the writings of the aforementioned female poets, was the true Muse. Skinner goes on to argue, through analysis of both Sappho and Nossis’s texts, that Aphrodite was not only considered the true muse for these women, but also stood as a near-equal within their homosocial creative environments. Aphrodite did not rule over or dominate female creators, but acted as a companion in a non-hierarchical manner, thereby eliminating the dominant-submissive “heterosexualized” erotic relationships that were common in male homosocial and homoerotic spaces.
The Classicist and Feminist scholar Ellen Greene, in “Subjects, Objects, and Erotic Symmetry in Sappho’s Fragments” also argues for the nonhierarchical structure of Sappho’s homosocial and homoeroticized spaces and same-sex relationships, not only in her life, but in her poetry. Greene analyzes the Sapphic fragments by way of object-subject relationships, arguing that Sappho did not view the “objects” of her amorous affections as submissive to her desires, but as equals. According to Greene, Sappho’s erotic gaze does not objectify, control, possess, or aestheticize the “object”, but states rather that the “flexibility of subject positions emphasizes the non-objectifying quality of the Sapphic gaze, offers [sic] an erotic discourse and practice that may constitute an alternative to the competitive and hierarchical models of eroticism common in male patterns of erotic discourse.” Historically, Sappho has often been “masculinized” to fit the norms of heterosexual power relationships, establishing one partner as the active or dominant (masculine/male) and the other as the passive or submissive (feminine/female). Prior to the late nineteenth-century her work had, tragically, been taken up by heterosexual male writers as an exemplum of desire for a passive female partner. Greene says that this idea of Sappho as a masculine, dominating counterpart is erroneous, and that her poetry proves that she and presumably the female members of her homosocial community followed a much more fluid set of gendered relations. Greene states that “ancient power structures of penetrated and penetrator dissolve in Sappho’s poetry…the distinctions between subject and object, lover and beloved, dissolve through a complex merging of female voices and through the speaker’s dynamic, rather than static, visual descriptions of the desired woman and the [homosocial] environment they both inhabit”. Marilyn Skinner, in “Aphrodite Garlanded”, speaks of the similar dissolution of the dominant-submissive power structures within the all-female homosocial spaces of Ancient Greece, revealing in her analysis of Sappho’s treatment of the goddess Aphrodite that the goddess was seen as an equal and an ally within and for the community of women, not a domineering or controlling ruler. Greene and Skinner both agree that heterosexualized power hierarchies and structures fell apart within the Sapphic spaces of Ancient Greece.
We might now gain a new perspective in our understanding of the Sappho and Erinna watercolor, and of Simeon Solomon himself. As mentioned prior, my own interpretation, one of many possibilities hidden within the enigmatic scene, explains away Erinna’s look of passivity as merely a state of being caught at the moment of dreamlike inspiration spurred by the muse-like spirit of Sappho. But another interpretation, also my own, sees the watercolor as an experiment in coping or overcoming the artist’s own anxieties about his sexuality and place in the social stratum. As in many of his earlier Biblical sketches, Solomon often experimented with scenes imbued with fear and sadness, and loss, or the fear and sadness caused by loss. Perhaps the Sappho and Erinna is merely another portrayal of the supposed but clearly erroneous power structures of ancient female homosocial structures, or perhaps it is Solomon expressing his own concerns over such social structures. Two small symbolic elements, combined with Erinna’s shallow, almost lifeless gaze, hint at the fears underlying this outwardly sweet image of two lovers. The blackbird near the two doves (literal “lovebirds”, mirroring the women on the bench) is a harsh splash of darkness amidst the creamy and light pastel hues; it is a possible omen of fear of separation, death, or the discovery of an illicit and disallowed affair. The small snake slithering in from the bottom right corner is also concerning, symbolically. Traditionally it has been affirmed that snakes may represent the devil or Satan, or they may be tricksters, or they may come with a poisonous bite that can cause death. Taken together, the blackbird and the snake are concerning elements to the otherwise peaceful picture, and two sketches from 1865 further evidence a possible pessimistic reading of the watercolor.
Simeon Solomon created two subsequent unfinished sketches in 1865, titled Erinna Taken from Sappho and Sappho, Atthis, and Eros. These can be considered directly serial to the Sappho and Erinna watercolor, though it is not known if they were purchased and owned by the same industrialist, James Leathart, who owned the watercolor. Both clearly depict a “bad” end to Sappho’s relationship with Erinna. The first, Erinna Taken (Figure 2), shows a similarly listless and fairly downcast Erinna being embraced by a male lover. They sit on the same bench as Sappho who stares forlornly at the two from the other end of the seat. At her side is once again a sort of altar to a small statue of Aphrodite, complete with leaning lyre and unrolled parchment. According to Colin Cruise, “the pain of Sappho’s position might echo that of all those desirous of same-sex love who involve themselves with bisexuals: from the unrequited emotion arises a disappointment that momentarily heightens desire.” Ignoring the somewhat confounding biphobic language used by Cruise, the sketch does seem to explicitly render the pain and confusion caused by a same-sex lover who has either rejected or been stolen from the subject. The second sketch (Figure 3) shows Sappho on the right, lyre slung across her back and hanging at her hip, clutching her hands in obvious desire for the woman Atthis, who stands centrally. They do not touch despite their closeness, and Atthis seems somewhat oblivious to Sappho’s affections, despite her small smile and coy glance downward. At Atthis’ side is the infant Eros, frowning in sadness and reaching to touch Atthis’ shoulder. Cruise states that this Eros is a version of the “’sad Love’ motif that appears in several works of around this date….perhaps expressing the hopelessness of Sappho’s fixation.” Atthis, unlike Erinna, was a woman mentioned by name in Sappho’s poetic fragments, which identify her as a past lover, or object of desire, whom has been lost to Sappho.
Frustratingly, Cruise provides only summary details and interpretations of these two sketches. He comes to the conclusion that they are reflections of Solomon’s own fears of rejection, loss, and loneliness due to his sexual identity as a gay man. I would like to attempt to take this interpretation a step further and explore the reasoning behind Solomon’s choice of Sappho to represent his negative thoughts and fears about his sexuality. To this end, a short examination of other generally contemporary Sapphic themes in painting is necessary to identify the differences in Solomon’s presentation of his particular brand of Sappho.
Prior to Solomon’s depictions of Sappho, three distinct types of Sappho imagery existed in painting: Sappho in repose or at rest, Sappho with a male lover or friend, or Sappho flinging herself to her death off of a cliff. Of the first type can be found works by the French Symbolist Ary Renan (Figure 4), the Hungarian Academicists Soma Orlai Petrich (Figure 5) and Karoly Lotz (figure 6), the Turkish-Russian Alexandre Isailoff (Figure 7), the Aestheticist John William Godward (Figure 8), Arnold Bocklin (Figure 9), and various other lesser known French and Italian Neoclassicists and Academicists. These repose types show Sappho sitting with her lyre indoors or in nature, or striding along a beach (presumably the coast of the island of Lesbos). In all, Sappho is shown alone and solitary. The second type of Sappho imagery is of the poet with a male lover or friend such as the poet Phaon. The most notable image of this type is Jacques-Louis David’s large 1809 canvas Sappho and Phaon (Figure 10), which shows Sappho as a loose-limbed figure falling into the arms of Phaon while Cupid stands by. Finally, the third image type is Sappho’s death by suicide, a tragic legend which seemed to have been particularly attractive to artists like Gustave Moreau (Figure 11), Jean-Joseph Taillasson (Figure 12), and Francisco Aznar (figure 13). As should be apparent, what can be considered the most major works depicting Sappho are by fairly obscure artists, with the exception of David, Moreau, and Bocklin. None of these works, again with the exception of those by David and Moreau, have been studied or provided any sort of interpretation and analysis. Therefore, it is difficult to make any conclusions about the role of Sappho for artists prior to Solomon, but it can be said that she was not a common or mainstream subject. Furthermore, I have found very few cases of Sappho depicted with her fellow women prior to Solomon’s example. The single exception is a painting that is dated to 1809 by a Danish artist named Nicolai Abildgaard (Figure 14), which shows a clothed Sappho embracing a nude girl from Mytilene. There are only minimal similarities to be found between this and Solomon’s watercolor, and it is entirely unlikely that Solomon would have known of or seen the Danish work. In fact, Solomon likely would not have been overtly familiar with many of the Sappho works mentioned above, with, once again, the exception of the David or perhaps the Moreau.
In any case, it is not our goal here to analyze these earlier examples of Sappho paintings, but to explore how Solomon’s differed, and why. Ellen Greene, in “Subjects, Objects, and Erotic Symmetry” states that Sappho was often made masculine, but in our cursory analysis of other Sappho paintings, it is apparent that her same-sex desire was nearly always completely erased from the picture as well. Even in a later painting such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 1881 masterpiece Sappho and Alcaeus (Figure 15)(now in the Walters Art Collection in Baltimore), Sappho’s attention is drawn toward the male figure rather than to her female companions who sit with her as they listen to Alcaeus’ lyric poetry. Even this female homosocial gathering is intruded upon by the male performer (though we may presume that Alma-Tadema would not have viewed this as an intrusion, necessarily).
It can be conclusively stated that nearly all representations of Sappho during the long nineteenth-century prior to Solomon’s work focus exclusively on the non-homoerotic elements of her character. Simeon Solomon’s watercolor breaks this trend and is virtually unparalleled in its open acknowledgment of Sapphic desire. The choice to portray Sappho in all her homoeroticism was obviously very intentional on the part of Solomon, who would have been familiar with no other attempts at such a portrayal. As a gay man he may have felt a certain sort of kinship with the erasure of Sappho’s obviously queer identity, so openly spoke of in the much-circulated translated fragments of her writings. Though he keeps Sappho in a fairly dominant, “masculine” role (the hint of an Adam’s Apple at her neck is a detail of note in this regard), she simultaneously remains beautiful and feminine, dressed in similarly flowing airy silk robes as Erinna wears. Sappho’s hair is soft and wispy, and she is the one who appears to be in the throes of amorous and erotic desire, not Erinna. In this case, though she appears physically dominant over Erinna, she has become spiritually submissive to same-sex love. With this watercolor, created on an incredibly intimate scale, Solomon has attempted to retain the sense of sweet tenderness and affection that exists in an all-female realm of non-hierarchical romantic relationships. It is wistful and hopeful even as it contains symbols of foreboding in the form of the blackbird and snake.
The question remains, however, as to why Solomon has seemingly placed his personal feelings and fears into a scene of female homosocialism and homoeroticism rather than an all-male scene. Once more, I would argue that the answer lies in the previously established art historical norms of representation. While the history of homosocialism in art is too great of a topic to cover in detail in this short essay, there is much to be gained via a brief examination of major works that “fit” the idea of the homosocial in the art of the long nineteenth-century. We have only to take the work of the school of Jacques-Louis David and its followers as exemplary of both male homosocial and male homoerotic imagery. For example, David’s 1784 Oath of the Horatii (Figure 16) portrays the division of a strictly male space and environment as differentiated from that of the female: the men are stoic, engaged, active, and domineering in their physical power and prowess as soldiers. The women, on the other hand, are both physically and spiritually separated from the male side of the space: columns in the background divide the picture physically into its masculine and feminine spheres, and the group of women on the female side is shown to be weakened and loose-limbed, overcome by their compromising emotions. Despite these separations, however, each group represents the respective male homosocial sphere and the female sphere: the women are unified in their submissiveness, whereas the men are almost unified in their dominance. Almost, because there is yet a sense of hierarchy here, which is important to note; the father is the obviously dominant figure even over the physically dominant soldier-sons. In contrast, there is no dominant female figure on the women’s side; all the women appear equal in their physical and emotional states.
Horace Vernet’s Studio from 1824 (Figure 17) is one of the most quintessential examples of the male homosocial environment as it existed in the early nineteenth-century. In the painting, the master’s entire multitude of students, apprentices, assistants, and perhaps even mere friends and acquaintances are shown together in an entirely masculine space, enclosed, private, and not privy to the views of the female population. Men are shown together smoking, conversing, painting, modeling, playing music, and even dueling (the central jauntily-posed figure with the pipe, shown from behind with a canvas on one arm and fencing blade held in the other, is a self-portrait of Horace Vernet himself). Though at first the group of men may appear equal, even as the master engages playfully with his students, there is still the knowledge of the social statuses on display: from master, to students engaged in painting, to the models who work for the students, there is a hierarchy that exists here.
A third example depicting the common hierarchical power structures inherent in male homosocial spheres in the nineteenth-century is the popular Davidian subject closest to the Classical themes Solomon was interested in at the time of the Sappho watercolor and sketches: scenes from the Trojan War, particularly those focusing on Achilles. The 1801 canvas The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the Tent of Achilles by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (Figure 18) sets up yet another hierarchical homosocial space, this time permeated by a clear sense of homoeroticism as well. Briefly, the painting depicts, on the left, the nude Achilles and his cousin, confidant, companion, and probable lover Patroclus being roused from repose by the ambassadors, some of which are also nude. A lone female figure retreats into the darkness at left, leaving the male space of the tent and war-grounds. Once more, there is a power structure, and power struggle, inherent in this Classical scene involving Achilles’ status as a warrior-general and the king’s ambassadors bearing to him orders associated with the royal status of the king. But separate is also the hierarchy inherent in the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, an example of a younger lover and an older, more dominant partner.
Though only having described three examples of male homosocial spaces depicted in art history, it is clear that Solomon would have had many well-known themes, both Classical and modern, to choose from had he wished to depict a male homosocial or homoerotic image in order to represent his own queer identity. Instead, he chose a female homosocial subject which is free of the power structures and hierarchies evidenced in the above examples of male homosocialism. Pertinent examples of such female non-hierarchical spaces include Ingres’ fairly contemporary 1862 Orientalist work Le Bain Turc (Figure 19) depicting an enormous group of women in a supposed “Turkish” bath (or possibly a harem). Though nude and obviously portrayed as such and in such an environment for the voyeuristic male gaze, the women are equal in power and status to one another, and involve themselves in affectionate and close touching that is unparalleled in any depictions of male homosocial spaces in the nineteenth-century. Other depictions of female spaces include imagery of the domestic sphere, in which female family members (mothers, sisters, daughters) are often shown in close proximity and affectionate, physical relationships with one another, openly in ways that male family members were rarely shown.
It seems evident that Solomon’s choice of a female homosocial/homoerotic scene was made in order to escape the seemingly necessary hierarchies and power structures that still existed in male homosocial spaces in the nineteenth-century, at least as they were depicted in art. Solomon may have been attracted to the equality of both female spaces generally, and Sappho’s spaces more specifically, as discussed earlier. In the struggle to form his own identity, such social and sexual equality would have been seen as preferable to the supposed ancient male homoerotic power structures of the dominant/penetrator and the submissive/penetrated.
In conclusion, I have found that the Sappho and Erinna watercolor may represent a number of themes and variations on the idea of Sappho as a historical, literary, and queer figure. I have put forth a few original interpretations of the watercolor, while connecting it with the tradition of Sapphic art more generally, as well as its place in contemporary imagery of female homosocial spaces and how it thus differs from male homosocial imagery. It is extraordinarily tempting to assign the symbols and themes of Sappho and Erinna as direct correspondences to Simeon Solomon’s own feelings, fears and anxieties, and plausible but ultimately unknown events that may or may not have occurred in his personal life. Simultaneously, however, it is dangerous and unwieldy to rely too heavily on proposed (auto)biographical explanations for any type of interpretive visual analysis. I argue that the few scholars who have written extensively on Solomon place too much emphasis on his personal biography, many details of which are unknown prior to his arrest on charges of public sodomy in 1873, and are therefore merely assumed to have occurred (such as possible instances of loss and rejection in Solomon’s life, nothing of which has been recorded). With this essay I have attempted to bring to light much of the possible symbolism and themes that are inherent in the visual works themselves, without overly relying on psychoanalytical strategies of analysis. I have attempted to parse out why Solomon chose to represent Sappho on multiple occasions, and why scholars have assigned Sappho as a symbol for Solomon personally. In the end I find that Solomon’s Sappho series stands strongly on its own as a set of original works of art that deserve further recognition for their part in Sappho scholarship as a whole.
Addendum (September 2020): Gustave Moreau painted a fascinating series of Sappho images between 1870 and 1875 that are worth considering if one were to further explore Sapphic imagery and critique in the later nineteenth-century. Below I have included all the versions I’ve been able to find online. Moreau seems to have been fascinated with the scene of Sappho’s death at the rocky cliffside. In these five examples, we have a vaguely chronological narrative of Sappho’s ultimate demise: Moreau depicts the poetess grieving atop the cliffside, fallen dead at the cliff’s bottom, and then perhaps Sappho’s apotheosis after her death, seemingly floating above the craggy rocks while playing her lyre on into eternity.
