Before the destruction of Solomon's reputation following his arrest for gross indecency with another man in 1873, Burne-Jones had described him as 'the greatest artist of us all: we are all schoolboys compared with [him].The poet Swinburne praised his pictures as ‘full of mystical attraction and passion, of bitter sweetness and burning beauty’, adding that ‘there is an entire class of Mr Solomon’s designs in which the living principle and moving spirit is music made visible.’ After his arrest, he was ostracised, and his promising career left in ruins, the insider was suddenly an outsider, For the last 32 years of his life Solomon lived ‘a jovial, drunken existence on the fringe of the London underworld, now referred to by Swinburne as ‘the wandering jew’. He frequented 'the gutters of the city, he slept and ate rough, earning pennies from selling matches and shoelaces in the Mile End Road and Whitechapel. In Houndsditch he associated with thieves; in Brompton Road he plied his trade as a pavement artist.’ This study was drawn nearly twenty years after Solomon’s conviction and is a fine drawing from the artist’s late period of ‘obscurity and penury.’ 

Delaware Art Museum is planning a major exhibition of the artist in the spring of 2027.