"Babylon hath been a golden cup"

Simeon Solomon

Date: 1859

Materials: Pen with black and brown ink, over pencil

Too risqué

Solomon's earliest work is mostly confined to biblical compositions, usually treating subjects of Jewish history. He was a natural choice to provide illustrations for the 'Bible Gallery', an ambitious project of a hundred or more wood engravings conceived by the brothers Dalziel in 1859. This extraordinary drawing was much too risqué for that purpose, and was exhibited separately at the French Gallery Winter Exhibition in 1859.

Jeremiah's lamentation

It illustrates a passage in Jeremiah containing the prophet's lamentation over the Jewish people's captivity under the kingdom of Babylon:

"Babylon hath been a golden cup in the hand of God, which hath made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine, therefore all the nations are mad".