Abraham Solomon

Abraham Solomon (London 7 May 1823 – 19 December 1862 Biarritz) was a British painter.

Painting shows a first class railway carriage. A young man and young woman talk as an older man sleeps.
Original version of (Travelling) First Class - The Meeting. "And at first meeting loved"
Painting shows a first class railway carriage. A young man and an older man talk as a young woman looks on.
Revised version produced after the original proved controversial

The second son of eight children born to Meyer Solomon, a Leghorn hat manufacturer and his wife Catherine (Kate) Levy. His father was one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the city of London, and the family resided in Sandys Street, Bishopsgate in east London. Two of Abraham's siblings were also artists: his sister, Rebecca Solomon (1832–1886), and his youngest brother, Simeon Solomon (1840–1905), who acquired much acclaim as an associate of the Pre-Raphaelites and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1858 to 1872; his later crayon drawings of idealized heads are still popular.

At the age of thirteen Abraham became a pupil in Sass's school of art in Bloomsbury, and in 1838 gained the Isis silver medal at the Society of Arts for a drawing from a statue. In 1839 he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he received in the same year a silver medal for drawing from the antique, and in 1843 another for drawing from the life.

Solomon died in Biarritz in France, of heart disease, on 19 December 1862, the same day on which he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.[1] He married, on 10 May 1860, Ella, sister of Dr. Ernest Hart; she survived her husband.[2]

  1. ^ Brian Stewart & Mervyn Cutten (1997). The Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1-85149-173-2.
  2. ^ Graves, Robert Edmund (1897). "Solomon, Abraham" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 52. London: Smith, Elder & Co. sources: [Art Journal, 1862 pp. 73–5, 1863 p. 29; Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists of the English School, 1878; Royal Academy Exhibition Catalogues, 1841–62; British Institution Exhibition Catalogues (Living Artists), 1851–61; Exhibition Catalogues of the Society of British Artists, 1840–3.]