Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/222

 Earl Craven, at the head of the British footguards, to retire (, Life of James II, 1816, ii. 264–5). In June 1689 Solms marched with his blues through Cheshire to embark for Ireland. On 1 July he was the first to cross the Boyne with his men. On 27 July William left Ireland, and entrusted the command in chief to Solms, then in camp at Carrick. Next summer Solms directed the first siege of Limerick until William's arrival; but he showed little aptitude for the business of a siege, and allowed a large artillery train to be cut off by the enemy. William, on arriving, effected nothing, operations being greatly impeded by the rains. Solms followed him to England in October, shortly afterwards sailed for Holland, and next March (1691) was promoted a general in the Dutch army. In Ireland, where nearly all the commanders were foreigners, he was replaced by Godert de Ginkel [q. v.] In the winter of 1691 he replaced Waldeck in the command of the Dutch troops in Belgium. During the campaign of 1692 he was high in command, and at Steinkirk (3 Aug.), where he commanded the third corps, he was much censured for not giving any effective support to General Hugh Mackay [q. v.], whose brigade of five English regiments was cut to pieces. William himself was said to have exclaimed ‘Oh! my poor English, how they are abandoned!’ Solms, whose military arrogance and unintelligible punctilio had rendered him detested by both English officers and men, was credited with an expression of curiosity as to ‘how the English bulldogs would come off.’ A year later (29 July 1693) his regiment was decimated, and Solms had his leg carried off by a cannon-shot at Neerwinden. He died in the French camp a few days afterwards. A capable divisional leader, Solms was brave to a fault, and his conduct in the field justified the esteem in which he was held by William.

[Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, i. 564, 615, ii. 84, 101, 111, 125, 199, 205, 318, 469, 636, iii. 146; Boyer's William III, pp. 6, 94, 103, 160, 258, 267, 278, 282, 323, 340; Harris's Life of William III; Rietstap's Armorial, 1887, ii. 796; Dangeau's Journal, ii. 437, 447, iv. 335; Dumont de Bostaquet's Mémoires, 1864, pp. 290 seq.; Story's Impartial History of the Wars in Ireland; Wilson's James II and Berwick, pp. 105, 368; Bramston's Autobiography, p. 327; Hatton Corresp. pp. 194, 196; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. v. 181; Wolseley's Marlborough, ii. 164; Macaulay's History, 1883, i. 613, ii. 82, 191, 207, 376–8, 438; Klopp's Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 1876, iv. 289; Muller's Wilhelm III von Oranien und Georg Friedrich von Waldeck, 1873, passim.]

 SOLOMON, ABRAHAM (1823–1862), painter, second son of Michael Solomon, a Leghorn-hat manufacturer, by his wife Catherine, was born in Sandy Street, Bishopsgate, London, in August 1823. His father was the first Jew to be admitted to the freedom of the city of London. Two members of the family besides Abraham became artists. A younger brother, Simeon, acquired some reputation as a pre-Raphaelite painter and pastellist; he exhibited domestic subjects at the Royal Academy from 1858 to 1872; his crayon drawings of idealised heads are still popular. A sister, Rebecca Solomon, exhibited domestic subjects at the Royal Academy and elsewhere between 1851 and 1875, and died on 20 Nov. 1886.

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. His first exhibited work, ‘Rabbi expounding the Scriptures,’ appeared at the Society of British Artists in 1840, and in the following year he sent to the Royal Academy ‘My Grandmother’ (now belonging to a cousin) and a scene from Sir Walter Scott's ‘Fair Maid of Perth.’ These were followed (at the Academy) by a scene from the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ in 1842, another from Crabbe's ‘Parish Register’ in 1843, and a third from ‘Peveril of the Peak’ in 1845. ‘The Breakfast Table,’ exhibited in 1846, and a further scene from the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ in 1847, attracted some attention. In 1848 appeared ‘A Ball Room in the year 1760,’ and in 1849 the ‘Academy for Instruction in the Discipline of the Fan, 1711,’ both of which pictures were distinguished by brilliancy of colour and careful study of costume. ‘Too Truthful’ was his contribution to the exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1850, and ‘An Awkward Position’—an incident in the life of Oliver Goldsmith—to that of 1851. In 1851, also, he sent to the British Institution ‘Scandal’ and ‘La petite Dieppoise.’ In 1852 appeared at the Academy ‘The Grisette’ and a scene from Molière's ‘Tartuffe’—the quarrel between Mariane and Valère, where Dorine interferes—and in 1853 ‘Brunetta and Phillis,’ from the ‘Spectator.’ In 1854, he sent to the Academy ‘First Class: the Meeting,’ and ‘Second Class: the Parting.’ Both were engraved in mezzotint by William Henry Simmons [q. v.], and marked a great advance in Solomon's work. They show an originality