Lot 236: ABRAHAM SOLOMON 1824-1862

signed with monogram and dated 1862 l.l.

oil on board

30 by 36 cm. ; 12 by 14 in.

Art Council of Great Britain, Victorian Paintings, 1962, no. 60

The Hon. Mrs Ionides;
London, Ernest Brown & Phillips;
Bought by the present owner from Charlotte Frank

By the Seaside was painted in the same year as The Lost Found (private collection), both pictures being influenced by the genre paintings of middle class life painted by William Powell Frith in the middle years of the nineteenth century, such as the famous Ramsgate Sands of 1854. Like Frith, Solomon painted several scenes of fashionable women on the beach and there are shared elements in By the Seaside and the critically acclaimed The Contrast of 1855 (private collection). The figure of the dark-haired woman reading on the right in The Contrast and the shaggy dog at her side, resemble those found in By the Seaside. The beautifully painted coastal views are similar, although the colouring and detailed observation of the ocean and cliffs in By the Seaside, is more accomplished.

The two women have paused momentarily to sit and contemplate a piece of poetry, perhaps a literary reference to the beauty of the ocean or of lovers parted by the ocean. The dark haired woman is lost in thoughts aroused by the stirring words of her companion's reading and turns her gaze away from the beautiful coastal landscape, to the skies. It has been suggested that the coastal view depicted in By the Seaside is Epphaven Cove near Lundy Beach, a popular beauty spot on the rugged coastline of North Cornwall. As there is often a symbolic meaning in Solomon's paintings, it might be possible to read this painting as a contrast of natural, wild beauty with the manicured aesthetics of the women, with their silk parasols and lacey bonnets. The small dog sits somewhere between the two worlds, but his expression of fidelity betrays his preference for comfort and the luxuries of the modern Victorian age.

This picture was at one time owned by the Greek Ionides family, who did so much to encourage Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Watts in the mid nineteenth century and formed one of the most famous collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in London, much of which is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum.