- Museum number
- 2017,7037.3
- Description
-
Illustration for Coleridge's 'Cristabel'; a woman with long dark hair and flowing dress
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1855-1857 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 166 millimetres
-
Width: 104 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- A sketchbook of Simeon Solomon’s early drawings dated between 1854 and 1860 (now held by the Museum of Art at the Eid Harod Kibbutz in Israel) shows that, as well as his interest in the ‘Talmud’, which was the inspiration for much of his early works, Solomon was also well versed in modern poetry. Amongst other things, the sketchbook holds drawings of scenes from John Keats’s ‘Eve of Saint Agnes’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘Talking Oak’ and ‘Mariana’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Chiaro and his Soul’ and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ (see Lambourne).
Though we cannot make any definitive connection between the present drawing and the works in the sketchbook, they are from the same period and Solomon’s interest in poetry is carried over. This drawing is an illustration for Coleridge’s unfinished poem ‘Cristabel’, which tells the story of the eponymous heroine discovering a lady, Geraldine, in a wood at night. Geraldine claims to have been kidnapped and Cristabel gives her shelter. However, Geraldine is not what she seems and casts some form of enchantment on Cristabel. The sections of the poem that Coleridge completed were published in pamphlet form in 1816, though they had originally been intended for a collaborative volume with works by William Wordsworth.Douglas Schoenherr (email September 2020) suggests that the drawing illustrates the line, 'This night, to share your couch with me'.
Solomon was, from an early age, heavily influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1857, the artist George Price Boyce, whilst visiting the studio of Simeon’s elder brother, the genre painter Abraham Solomon, was moved to comment on Simeon’s ‘remarkable designs showing much Rossetti-like feeling’ (quoted Reynolds, p. 5). In the present drawing we can see echoes of Rossetti’s illustrations, such as his design for ‘The Maids of Elfin-Mere’, a ballad by the Irish poet William Allingham published in 1855. (Rossetti changed the orthography from Elfin to Elfen when titling his illustration.) With its primitivist notes and loose handling of the pen, we can also draw comparisons between the current drawing and Lizzie Siddal’s works from the same period.
Further reading:
L. Lambourne, A Simeon Solomon Sketch-book, Apollo, vol. 85, 1967, pp. 59-61.
Simon Reynolds, The Vision of Simeon Solomon, Catalpa Press, Stroud, Glos., 1984.
This curatorial comment was written by Olivia Ghosh, Anne Christopherson Fellow in Dept. of Prints and Drawings, July 2017, with advice and assistance from Douglas Schoenherr, Colin Cruise, John Miller, Carolyn Conroy, Roberto Ferrari and Dennis Lanigan.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
London, Maas Gallery, Pre-Raphaelites - Art Nouveau, 1964, no. 136.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, An exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Victorian Artists in England, 1965, no. 141.
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Cristabel
- Acquisition date
- 2017
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2017,7037.3
