Five historic queer Christian artists you won’t hear about in church
Let’s look at Simeon Solomon, Kristian Zahrtmann, Edward Wolfe, Glyn Philpot and David LaChapelle
Published in
9 min readApr 10, 2023
When I grew up Christian, we never learned much about ‘Christian art’ in church. Later I went to look it up, and got quite a surprise.
Many of the groups the religion was prejudicially excluding had been doing very serious spiritual work through their art. In the work of scattered queer artists, I found some of my own favorite illustrations of the Bible.
Simeon Solomon (1840-1905)
Whn young he was tight with the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists, and seemed on track to be a successful artist. He often painted Old Testament scenes. Typically, two people of the same sex are working together or nestled in some kind of intimate embrace.
Solomon seems to like moments before the action starts. He didn’t paint conflict, but togetherness.
