Estella Frances Solomons HRHA (1882-1968)On Parole, 1920Oil on canvas, 52 x 44cmSigned with initials and inscribed with title

 

Exhibited: 'Estella Solomons Retrospective' Exhibition, The...

Estella Frances Solomons HRHA (1882-1968)On Parole, 1920Oil on canvas, 52 x 44cmSigned with initials and inscribed with title

 

Exhibited: 'Estella Solomons Retrospective' Exhibition, The Crawford Gallery, Cork May/June 1986, Cat. No. 87 - illustrated in the catalogue; 'Estella Solomons Exhibition', The Frederick Gallery, November 1999, Cat. No. 48, where purchased by PJ and Breda Mara - illustrated in the catalogue.

 

Breda Mara was a regular and welcome visitor to The Frederick Gallery on route to her special dress maker Richard Lewis whose salon was next door.

 

This is a rare survivor of many portraits that Estella Solomons painted of the insurgents on the run who used her studio on Great Brunswick Street as a 'Safe House'. Most of the others had to be destroyed as they would identify and betray the whereabouts of the sitters. Estella was a member of Cumann na mBan where she was well versed in signalling and prepared for administering first aid during the rising and hiding arms in her parents garden. She was at the centre of a Dublin swaying on a political precipice.

 

Her husband, Seamus O'Sullivan later writing in 'The Rose and bottle and other essays' described her studio "as a place of refuge for many whose political and national activities had brought them a very undesirable amount of notice in 'the bad times'".

 

Our thanks to Hilary Pyle whose writings on the artist formed the basis for this catalogue entry.

 

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