Abraham Solomon
English, 1823–1862
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Abraham Solomon was a British painter.
Born as the second son of Meyer Solomon, a Leghorn hat manufacturer, by his wife Catherine, in Sandys Street, Bishopsgate in east London. His father was one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the city of London. Two members of the family besides Abraham became artists. A younger brother, Simeon Solomon, 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 idealised 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. He married, on 10 May 1860, Ella, sister of Dr. Ernest Hart; she survived her husband.