However, Simeon soon fell into neglect. His contribution to British art in general, and to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in particular, was lost to scholars for nearly a century.

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He and his work have been re-examined through the lens of gender studies only during the 1990s. A web site devoted to him has recently been mounted on the internet by art historian Roberto Ferrari. It includes digital images of some works, full text files of some writings about the artist, and a comprehensive bibliography. The site should facilitate scholarly study of this important Victorian artist.

A theory of art and an approach to living that influenced many European and American gay male and lesbian writers at the turn of the twentieth century, aestheticism stressed the independence of art from all moral and social conditions and judgments.

Several artists and art critics of the nineteenth century achieved a self-aware homosexual identity that is expressed in both their lives and their works, but lesbianism is only rarely depicted in terms of identity during this period.

It is not surprising, since the Bible insists that David be looked at and admired, that he should emerge in Western art as the incarnation of male physical attractiveness, especially as rendered by Michelangelo.

The Greek god of wine, revelry, and orgiastic delights, and the patron god of hermaphrodites and transvestites, Dionysus has been extremely popular as a subject of Western art.

Throughout much of history, the nude male figure was virtually the only subject that could be used to articulate homoerotic desire in publicly displayed works of art, as well as those works of art intended for private "consumption."

Despite Sappho's status as most ancient lesbian foremother, her image is almost entirely absent from modern and contemporary lesbian art.

English decadent and Symbolist artist Aubrey Beardsley made a lasting contribution to the art of illustration; a satirist with a gift for caricature and grotesquerie, Beardsley attacked Victorian sexual values.

The aesthetic of the important and influential Victorian critic Walter Pater reflected a homosexual sensibility.

Algernon Charles Swinburne was interested in flagellation, sadomasochism, bisexuality, and lesbianism, not only for their erotics but also as gestures of social and cultural rebellion.

John Addington Symonds was the most daring innovator in the history of nineteenth-century British homosexual writing and consciousness.