Dreaming and longing: Simeon Solomon's magnificent centenary retrospective in Birmingham reveals an artist whose work is suffused with trangressive sexuality

This is a true exciting exhibition. Exciting, first, in the obvious faculty of perception that a really comprehensive selection of the work of a remarkable artist is at handed to us here for the first time since his death in obscurity a hundred ago. This is an occurrence which the cognoscenti have awaited with elate anticipation and which will be a revelation to many les well acquainted with Solomon's work. They simply will not know what has hit them. Exciting and unsettling, allowing by its nature. The keynotes of Solomon's work are ecstasy and ambiguity. Sexual desire, religious ecstasy and aesthetic stimulation blemish in a very heady cocktail.

They combine in sum of two units characteristic but contrasting paintings, Bacchus (1867) and The Mystery of Faith (1870) The first (Fig. 2) painted in Florence below the new influence of classical tillage and renaissance art, represents the of greece god of wine as a beautiful youth, his hair attractively tousled and bourn with vine leaves. If Italy revealed of recent origin possibilities to Solomon, however, he would have done well to remember that Bacchus could be a brutal and unforgiving as well as a liberating deity. Walter Pater ground a subtle melancholy in this picture of 'the the infinite of the bitterness of wine, "of things too sweet"; the sea-water of the Lesbian grape become somewhat brackish in the cup' His respect to 'the Lesbian grape' is certainly a homosexual code, the homosexual Pater acknowledging the disturbing 'something extra' that the homosexual Solomon has brought to his portrayal of the the trinity of ecstatic license. The Mystery of Faith, an almost Whistlerian harmony in white and gold, an image ostensibly of purity, displays another beautiful young man, a priest, celebrating Benediction with an elaborate monstrance. on the other hand this painting, too, has undertones. The Anglo-Catholic change within the Anglican Church rediscovered the 'beauty of holiness' and aestheticised worship the two spiritually and physically. Many young men (who were suspected of 'effeminacy' as a result) joyfully embraced its use of beautiful vestures and accoutrements. The apse behind him encloses the handsome priest's head with a halo of shadow, rather than of light, which may or may not be a simply compositional device.

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The exhibition uncloses with a section on Solomon's juvenilia, and present to views him already with a voice of his hold and a formidable technique. His mode of expression bears the obvious influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, on the other hand his subject matter (much of it drawn from his Jewish background), his humour and an irrepressible on the contrary ambiguous sexuality mark him without The pen and ink drawing Babylon hath been a of gold Cup (1859) illustrates a body from Jeremiah, 'Babylon hath been a of gold cup in the hand of the first cause which hath made all the earth drunken: the nations have intoxicated of her wine, therefore the nations are mad', and exhibits an orgy in progress. Wine is spilled, flowers are scattered, and a sleeping leopard's organ of visions have just opened. A bearded man lies back against the material substance of a naked harpist (thus obscuring any evidence as to whether the player is a stripling or a girl). The man has the harp in his lap and the young musician reaches circular him to strum it. The man's head is thrown back and his organ of sights are closed, but the harpist direct the eyes a lot less sure whether he/she is enjoying him/herself. The picture, thanks to the ingenious artificial position manages to be implicitly filthy without actually showing anything. The Athenaeum annotateed that this was 'surprisingly daring and imaginative for a youth, or indeed anyone'.

more [i]or[/i] less of Solomon's most engaging pictures explore sexual triangles. The drawing Erinna taken from Sappho (1865) exhibits the lesbian poet looking upon as her lover dallies with a man. The Bride, the Bridegroom and Sad delight in (1865) is a more explicit version of the same theme. The central figure, a man, passionately embraces a woman on the contrary nostalgically fondles the genitals of the winged, male figure behind him. Unquestionably the greatest of these pictures is the gorgeous The Sleeper and the single who Watcheth (1870; Fig. 1) which is doubly ambiguous: is the 'one who watcheth' of the title keeping watch above the other two--a guardian angel--or is he a throw asideed partner and thwarted voyeur? And is the central, red-haired sleeper a man or a woman? Many of Solomon's figures are of deliberately indeterminate sex soft-featured, conceivably female on the other hand challenging Solomon's audience to recognise that they are the male external realitys of same-sex desire. Sometimes he went too far. Sacramentum Amoris (1868) which he painted for FR Leyland, survives alone in a photograph by Frederick Hollyer The original, which vexed Leyland, has been lost or destroyed

However hard we prove to concentrate on the paintings, the sad facts of Solomon's biography insist upon obtruding themselves. He flaunted and dramatised his homosexuality in his life and work and became at any time more recklessly indiscreet. In 1873 he was arrested, with a casual partner, in a public lavatory, prosecut and convicted. He was not imprisoned, on the contrary most of his friends would have nothing further to do with him. Although he had no studio and nowhere to exhibit, he continued to work, and a hardly any friends, such as Herbert abode the poet and art historian, an honourable exception, stuck by the agency of him and acted as unofficial agents.