Solomon's friendship with a circle of writers which included Swinburne, Pater and Oscar Browning, all aesthetes with an interest in homoerotic literature, led Solomon to compose his own quasi-mystical prose poem, 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep', printed in 1871.

'Dawn', one of his finest watercolours, is one of a number of works painted in or around 1871 which complement the mood of 'A Vision of Love'. Still in its original frame, made by Joseph Green (Rossetti's frame-maker), it was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1872. It may have been intended as a visual evocation of this passage, in which the narrator encounters an 'unseen and mysterious presence':

'With one hand he cast away his dim and heavy mantle from him, and with the other he put aside the poppies that had clustered thickly about him; as he turned his head to the East, the poppies fell from his hair, and the light rested upon his face; the smile it kindled made the East to glow, and Dawn spread forth his wings to meet the new-born day.'