In 1856, aged only sixteen, the Victorian artist Simeon Solomon (1840–1905) produced an elaborate pencil drawing depicting eight scenes from the story of David and Jonathan.

Eight Scenes from the Story of David and Jonathon

Rather like Saint Sebastian, David and Jonathan have long fascinated gay men, as their story seems to depict a tender relationship between two men within the context of the Bible, a text which is often used to condemn homosexuality. Solomon's drawing is just one example of his artistic exploration of his own gay identity, a fundamental theme in his work both before and after his arrest for 'gross indecency' in 1873. As we will see, Solomon openly celebrates love between two men.

The tale of David and Jonathan is told in the Book of Samuel, which constitutes one book in the Hebrew Bible and two in the Old Testament of the Christian one. To help the viewer distinguish David from Jonathan, Solomon used a golden halo to identify David. Stars of David also appear between the Gothic arches that frame each vignette, indicating Solomon's Jewish identity and the significance of David for the Jewish people, but also demonstrating a curious religious eclecticism.

The first compartment depicts David's lowly origins as a shepherd, the son of Jesse, a farmer. In the second vignette, David is being anointed by the prophet Samuel as the future king of Israel, in the presence of his three brothers (1 Samuel 16:13).

Detail of 'Eight Scenes from the Story of David and Jonathon'

In the third compartment, David plays the harp to King Saul, Jonathan's father (1 Samuel 16:23). In the fourth, David has slain Goliath and is thrusting aloft the giant's head (1 Samuel 17:49–51).

The fifth compartment, at the start of the second row, can be explained by the quotation from 1 Samuel 18:1: 'And it came to pass, […] that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.' The passage continues: 'Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul, and Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David' (1 Samuel 18:3–4).

The pose of the lovers, and even the ivy-clad brick wall behind them, instantly recall Millais's A Huguenot, which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy to much acclaim in 1852.

The next vignette depicts the moment, after the killing of Goliath, when the women of Israel 'came out of all cities […] singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tabrets [timbrels or tambourines], with joy' (1 Samuel 18:6–8). Saul is outraged by the women's songs and their praise of David's victory, and he comes to believe that David and his son Jonathan are plotting to overthrow him.

The penultimate compartment appears to show David, now king, signing a heavenly covenant: it is probably that described in 2 Samuel 7:12–16, the so-called Davidic Covenant, whereby God promised to David that the latter's descendants would rule Israel forever. The final, eighth scene shows the death of King David, at the age of 70, watched over by his weeping son, King Solomon. The woman kneeling forlorn at the bedside is probably David's wife, Bathsheba. Jonathan died years before, at the Battle of Mount Gilboa.

Besides Millais's A Huguenot, another visual reference by Solomon to the radical early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is evident in the depiction of young David standing triumphantly over the slain Goliath, brandishing the giant's severed head in his left hand. David's upturned face and thrusting fist evoke William Holman Hunt's painting Rienzi (1849).

Rienzi vowing to obtain Justice for the Death of his Young Brother

Medieval paraphernalia and costumes proliferate both works: tunics, swords, chainmail, armour, leggings. The male relationships in Hunt's painting are fraternal: Rienzi cradles his dead brother, and Rienzi and the brother were modelled for by Hunt's Pre-Raphaelite 'brothers' – Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Millais, respectively.

Yet while Hunt's choice of medium – painting – forces him to adhere to stringent rules of perspective and accurate colouring, Solomon's medium of drawing allows him to indulge his private (and gay) medieval fantasies with ease. In a way, drawing was more conducive to exploring private worlds, relatively free as it was from strict academic rules of colour and composition.

The spare outline style of Solomon's David and Jonathan harks back to the early drawings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from the late 1840s. Many of these drawings were heteronormative and highly medieval in nature, depicting male-female couples engaged in courtly love. Millais's Lovers by a Rosebush and Rossetti's Genevieve, both from 1848, are particularly chaste examples.

Illustration to Coleridge's Poem 'Genevieve'

Solomon's David and Jonathan drawing is radical because it utilises this outline style – typically used for scenes of heterosexual love – for a representation of two men. Interpretations of David and Jonathan's relationship have ranged from the homoerotic to the homosocial (the latter meaning, in other words, that they were 'just friends').

Yet Solomon's response is very clear: looking again at the vignette in the bottom-left corner, we see two male youths sharing a romantic moment. It is self-consciously archaic because of the medieval costumes, yet strikingly modern in the sense that two men are depicted openly embracing.

The positioning of the hands is intimate, with Jonathan caressing David's head as if to draw him closer for a kiss. Beside them is a woman who stares with almost comic obliviousness at a book. She may be Bathsheba, David's future wife.

Solomon juxtaposed male same-sex desire with a passive female figure in later images, such as The Bride, the Bridegroom and the Friend of the Bridegroom (1868), a homoerotic rendition of John 3:29 ('He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice').

1868, pencil and conté on paper by Simeon Solomon (1840–1905)

In Solomon's interpretation of the 'soul-knitting' scene from 1 Samuel 18, David and Jonathan are expressing their true homosexual inclinations in opposition to heterosexual norms, made clear by the inclusion of Bathsheba. Such homoerotic readings of biblical passages likely still have the power to shock some viewers today, yet even in his lifetime, Solomon exhibited these daring images in public, such as an oil version of The Bride, the Bridegroom and the Friend of the Bridegroom at the Dudley Gallery in 1869.

Solomon gave his drawing of The Bride to the classical scholar Walter Pater. Pater's own homosexuality made him an ideal recipient for the drawing, indicating a visual language shared between gay men. Solomon was a forerunner of twentieth-century artists like Duncan Grant and even Tom of Finland, creating drawings that appealed first and foremost to male homosexual tastes.

The appropriation of a medieval style of drawing for queer purposes later occurred in Edmund Dulac's double portrait of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who were lifelong partners.

Charles Ricketts (1866–1931), and Charles Shannon (1863–1937), as Medieval Saints

In 1871, Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote that Solomon's depictions of Bacchus and Sappho bore 'the stamp of sorrow; of perplexities unsolved and desires unsatisfied.'

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene

Yet Solomon's David and Jonathan drawing, produced very early in his career – and long before his arrest in 1873 – strikes a different, even positive note, instead celebrating the satisfaction that can be achieved by two men in love.

Robert Wilkes, art historian

This content was funded by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation