Sliding on the Round Pond
Portrait, landscape and figure painter Gilbert Solomon was born into a Jewish family in London in 1890, the son of a kid and leather tanner. He studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1907–11, alongside fellow Jewish student Mark Gertler (Solomon, unusually, was one of the few Jewish students not aided by the Jewish Education Aid Society to pay his tuition fees); his cohort also included J. D. Innes, Stanley Spencer and Frances Helps, who became a close friend. Solomon left in the summer of 1911 with the Summer Composition Prize. He spent some time in Cornwall, then studied in Paris under Renée Prinet (1913–14), and was painting in Brittany when the First World War broke out. He returned to London, serving as a Captain in the Air Force, later promoted to Squadron Commander. Postwar his work included a pointillist-style painting of an aerial battle, 'The Mist Curtain: RE 8 (16th Squadron) Attacked over Lens' (1918), purchased by the Imperial War Museum. An Associate Member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1923, elected a full member in 1926, he also exhibited at the Royal Academy, and during the early 1930s spent some time in the mountain region of Italy, near Rome, painting with Francis Helps. During the Second World War, he became Art Director of the Design Section of Civilian Camouflage at Leamington. Afterwards, he was commissioned to paint a picture of D-Day for one of the Royal Warwickshire Regimental battalions. Between 1936 and 1952, he was a member of the Ben Uri Arts Committee, who occasionally chaired the meetings in the absence of the President, Ethel Solomon. In his final years, he was Vice-President of the Royal Society of British Artists. He died in London in 1955 and a retrospective was held at Ben Uri in 1959. His work is also represented in UCL Art Museum.
