Mother of Moses

'Mother of Moses' of 1860, now at the Delaware Art Museum, is an early Solomon treating a subject from the Book of Exodus: the moment when Moses's mother Jochebed places the infant in a basket among the reeds to save him from Pharaoh's decree. Solomon, from a prominent Anglo-Jewish family, had both personal and cultural reasons to engage with Old Testament narrative subjects, and his treatment of Jewish biblical figures consistently shows an intimacy of feeling that distinguishes them from the typical Victorian academic handling of biblical subjects. In 1860 Solomon was seventeen years old, and the Delaware holding represents very early evidence of his exceptional precocity. The subject's combination of maternal love, political danger, and faith-driven action gave a young painter with strong narrative instincts a rich material.

The 1860 canvas shows the young Solomon's Pre-Raphaelite formation in its precise attention to the Nile vegetation and the texture of the reed basket. The emotional core — the mother's expression at the moment of releasing her child to an uncertain fate — is handled with psychological subtlety beyond what might be expected from a seventeen-year-old, suggesting he drew on the subject's personal resonance as well as technical instruction.