Lot 2031
SIMEON SOLOMON (1840-1905)
A CHE IL MARE SAREBBE LA MIA TOMBA
Signed with initials, dated 1894 and inscribed with title across the top, red chalk
36.5 x 47cm.
* The title apparently derives from a line in an Italian translation of `Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus` by Mary Shelley (publ. 1818) and translates as `that the sea would be my grave`. To his biographer, Julia Elsworth Ford, Solomon remarked "Night, Sleep, Death and the Stars, they are the the theme that I love best." By 1894, Solomon was a destitute alcoholic, living in a workhouse following a ruinous conviction for homosexual soliciting over twenty years earlier.
