Abraham Solomon was born into a third-generation immigrant Jewish family in Sandy’s Street, Bishopsgate Without, in the East of London, England on 14 May 1823; his father was a merchant Michael (Myer) and his younger siblings Rebecca (1832–1886) and Simeon (1840–1905) also became well-known artists. After attending preparatory art schools, Sass’s and Carey’s, in Bloomsbury from the age of 13, Abraham was recommended for admission to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 15, where he gained silver medals for drawing from the Antique (1839) and from life (1843). He began exhibiting at the age of 16 with his ‘Rabbi Expounding the Scriptures’, displayed in March 1840 at the Society of British Artists, also exhibiting three works at the Liverpool Academy the same year. In addition to exhibiting with both societies, in May 1841 he showed two paintings at the Royal Academy including a scene from a Sir Walter Scott novel. In 1843 he was commissioned to copy Antoine Claudet’s daguerreotype of the Duke of Wellington, afterwards made into a steel engraving by Henry Thomas Ryall.
In 1846 Abraham established his own studio in Percy Street, London (followed by others at Howland Street, Upper Charlotte Street and, finally, 18 Gower Street, which he shared with sister Rebecca). He regularly exhibited genre paintings of literary and popular subjects at the RA including, in 1842, a scene from Oliver Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield', and from the late 1940s many of his paintings were reproduced as engravings for the Illustrated London News. After travelling to Biarritz in the south of France in autumn 1862 to recuperate from a heart condition, he died there suddenly on 19 December 1862, at the age of 39. His work has been shown posthumously at Ben Uri Gallery including in the opening exhibition of the Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery and an Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists at Woburn House, London in 1934. 'Le Malade Imaginaire' was acquired for the Ben Uri Collection in 2021 and included in the exhibition 'Shaping the Future: New Arrivals at the Ben Uri Collection' in 2023. Solomon's work is in many UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, Guildhall Art Gallery, the Jewish Museum London, the National Railway Museum, Royal Holloway (University of London), Southampton City Art Gallery, the Tate, Yale Center for British Art and the Wellcome Institute.
