Dawn (Head of Hypnos)

Simeon Solomon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A member of an English Jewish family of artists, Solomon was inspired the Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. "Dawn" belongs to a series of late drawings that respond to the artist's own prose poem, "A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep" (1871), and combine mystical Hebraic and hedonistic classical elements. The artist's final years were spent in social exile and declining health, shunned by family and friends for his increasingly open homosexuality. Recently, Solomon's distinct style and contributions to art of the late Victorian era have been increasingly studied and admired.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art