In the shadows

And thank you, Fiona McCarthy, for this discovery:  "the pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon, whom Burne-Jones continued to befriend after Solomon's arrest in a London public lavatory made him a virtual outcast and ended his career. Connoisseurs of male eroticism hung their Burne-Jones pictures alongside their Simeon Solomons."  Wilde was a collector.

You bet he was.  "Bacchus":



"Dawn" (I could swear that he's smoking):




"Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene":




"Sappho Taken from Erinna":



And Solomon was pushing at the envelope in other ways.

"Rabbi Carrying the Law":



And wow, "Portrait of Fanny Eaton," a study for the head of Miriam:



A stunner of color!  Rossetti described her as having "as having ‘a very fine head and figure—a good deal of Janey."  And a beauty she was.  Here's a portrait in chalk by the little-known artist Walter Fryer Stocks:



I would love to see that on a cover.

Nine