The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
Sir Edward John Poynter (1836 to 1919) · 1881 to 1890
A vast canvas the size of a wall shows the Queen of Sheba climbing the steps of Solomon's throne, dressed in gold and white, with her attendants bearing gifts behind her, while the king rises from a throne flanked by golden lions and the court looks on. Peacocks, musicians, carved cedar pillars and bronze basins fill every inch of the scene, painted with the detail of a jeweller. It is the grandest picture in the Grand Courts and the one children stand in front of longest.
Poynter spent nine years on it. He was president of the Royal Academy and one of the Victorian painters who tried to reconstruct the ancient world with archaeological exactness, and he researched the Temple of Solomon and its furnishings in the Bible and in recent excavations. Look at the lions of the throne, the patterned floor, the individual fingers of every figure; he drew each one from a model beforehand. The colour is warm and rich, dominated by gold, and the perspective is arranged so that you seem to stand at the foot of the steps among the courtiers.
The gallery bought the painting in 1892, at a time when it was building a collection of contemporary British art to educate colonial taste. Works like this went out of fashion for most of the twentieth century and spent decades in storage, but the recent rehang of the Grand Courts has given them back their place, and the Queen of Sheba now presides over the room as she was meant to. It is a good place to consider what Victorian Sydney thought great art should look like.
Did You Know? Poynter worked on the painting for nine years and drew every figure from a live model before painting it.
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