The Bathers Alarmed

Solomon Joseph Solomon was an unusually versatile artist, at a time when many artists tended to focus on a favoured genre. While he is mainly known for his portraiture he also produced biblical, or in the case of this distinguished nude painting, mythical scenes. We see women bathing in a pool suddenly realising they are being observed by a man on a rearing white horse in the top left of picture. It is suggestive of the myth of the huntress Diana who was observed by Actaeon. She turned him into a stag and he was torn apart by his own hunting dogs.

Solomon was a founder member of the Royal Academy’s rival exhibiting society, the New English Art Club in 1886, but a decade later became one of the few Jewish artists elected to the Royal Academy.

Sir Merton Russell Cotes bought this painting from the artist and although he claimed that he had “a very great regard” for Solomon, when he bought this ‘fine’ painting, he decided “there were a few little things that I considered might be improved”. Solomon agreed to carry out the improvements and eventually returned the painting to Merton who recorded in his autobiography Home and Abroad “I was delighted … in fact, so much so that I scarcely knew it again. He had practically gone all over it and almost, if not quite, painted it again and made a new picture of it. I of course wrote, tending him my heartiest thanks for the splendid result which he had attained and if he would kindly let me know the amount I was indebted to him, I would send him a cheque. The reply came from him to the effect that my great appreciation of his work was the only reward he wished”. Solomon’s version of events is unrecorded.