Solomon Hart

Solomon Alexander Hart was a British painter and engraver. He was the first Jewish member of the Royal Academy in London and was probably the most important Jewish artist working in England in the 19th century.

He was born at Plymouth, the son of Samuel Hart (fl. 1785–1830), a Jewish engraver and teacher of Hebrew. He remained an observant Jew all his life. He served as an engraver's apprentice in London where he studied at the Royal Academy, and excelled in miniature painting. Hart became celebrated as a painter of historical scenes and characters and, in 1854, was appointed professor of Painting in the Royal Academy, and subsequently librarian.

Works:

[The Quarrel of] Wolsey and Buckingham (1834) Coeur de Lion and Saladin (1835) The Young Falconer (1835) Sir Thomas More receiving his Father's Blessing (1836) Henry I receiving News of the Shipwreck and Death of his Son (1840) Milton visiting Galileo in Prison (1847) The Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law at the Synagogue in Leghorn, Italy (1850) The Three Inventors of Printing (1852) Hop Picking (1852) Solomon pondering the Flight of Time (1853) Columbus (1854) Sacred Music (1860)

Dilettanti (1861) Desdemona and Othello (1863) Benvenuto Cellini and Francis I (1864) The Eve of the Sabbath (1868) Portrait of Sir Moses Montefiore (1869) Oliver Cromwell and Menasseh Ben Israel (1873) Troy Weight (1874) A Reminiscene of Ravenna (1875) Dinner-Time at Penshurst in 1655 (1876) Reflection (1877) Perfidy (1878)

Sources: This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "article name needed". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.
"Obituary". Jewish Chronicle. 17 June 1881.
Solomon Alexander Hart at the Royal Academy of Arts
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Valentine, Helen (2004). "Hart, Solomon Alexander (1806–1881)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.