The Lemon Seller

'The Lemon Seller,' undated and painted on cardboard, belongs to Solomon's later career when he was living in poverty after his 1873 conviction. The cardboard support is a material index of reduced circumstances — a painter without the resources for stretched canvas working on whatever was available. The subject of a street seller is also unusual within Solomon's oeuvre, which is dominated by biblical, classical, and allegorical figures: here we find someone from the everyday urban world, though Solomon's characteristic tendency toward aesthetic idealisation would likely have inflected even this mundane subject with his sensory and spiritual concerns. The lemon as a colour note — warm yellow against whatever surrounding tones Solomon chose — would have functioned as a chromatic accent consistent with his continuing aesthetic instincts even in material adversity.

Cardboard as a support absorbs paint differently from canvas, producing a flatter, more matte surface that required adjusted technique. Working on a physically humble support, Solomon appears to have maintained his characteristic attention to figure type and colour relationship despite constrained means. The lemon's warm yellow provides the dominant colour accent in what was likely a more sombre palette appropriate to the street context.