Dawn

Simeon Solomon

Date: 1871 

Materials: Watercolour

Watercolour Technique

Solomon's friendship with a group of writers, all aesthetes with an interest in homoerotic literature, led him to write a quasi - mystical poem called 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep' which was printed in 1871.

Solomon completed very few oil paintings, but produced many watercolours during the 1860s. 'Dawn' is arguably the most accomplished of these.

Mystical Poem

The mood of the poem inspired 'Dawn' and may have been an attempt to evoke the passage in which the narrator senses an "unseen and mysterious presence":

'There lay upon him yet the shadow of the Night, but his face had upon it the radiance of an unexpected glory, the light of the glad things to come. . . . With one hand he cast away his dim and heavy mantle from him, and with the other he put aside the poppies that had clustered thickly about him; as he turned his head to the East, the poppies fell from his hair, and the light rested upon his face;the smile it kindled made the East to glow, and Dawn spread forth his wings to meet the new-born Day'.