Life
1882-1968; b. Dublin of Jewish parents; br. of distinguished gynaecologist Bethel Solomons (see note); ed. Royal Hibernian Academy, under Walter Osborne; Metropolitan School, Dublin, and London under William Orpen; also Chelsea School of Art, and Colarossi’s in Paris; ARHA, 1925; later HRHA; mbr. Cumann na mBan; assisted at Rising, 1916; active Republican; m. James Starkey (Seamus O’Sullivan, q.v.), contrary to family wishes, 5 Aug. 1926; her portraits are in num. collections such as TCD Common Room; also prints of Dublin scenes. BREF
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Works
Estella Solomons, Portraits of Patriots, with biog. sketch by Hilary Pyle (Allen Figgis 1966), 37pp., index.
The subjects of her portraits include William Starkey (father of James Starkey, otherwise Seumas O’Sullivan, whom she married); an early portrait of James Stephens (who was a neighbour in the flat below her studio at Brunswick St.; and note that there is another portrait of the poet in his candle-extinguisher cloak by Frank Tuohy); her father Maurice Solomons; her mother Rosa Solomons; Bethel Solomons [& another in family possession]; a butterwoman; Fr O’Flanagan; Padraic Colum [in 1921]; Monsignor Pádraig de Brún [1917]; Seán Milroy; Frank Gallagher (1920); F. R. Higgins; Joseph Campbell; Alice Milligan; Kathleen Goodfellow; Frank Aiken; Austin Clarke (1934); George Russell, AE; Father Dinneen (shown RHA 1921); Thomas Bodkin (1924); Seumas O’Kelly, William Fearon; Ernest Boyd; Art O’Murnaghan; Jack B Yeats (1922, purchased Sligo Museum 1962); Patrick MacDonagh.
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Notes
Kith & Kin: Bethal [Albert Herbert] Solomons (1885-65), son of Maurice Solomons (d.1922), member of Jewish family which moved from Hull (England) to Dublin in 1824; br. of Estella (supra) and Edwin (d.1964); ed. St. Andrew’s School, Dublin, TCD (med.); appointed Master of Rotunda - hence his appearance in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake [‘in my bethel of Solyman’s I accouched my rotundaties’], his father, an optician, having appeared glancingly in Ulysses; founding member of Sinn Fein and supporter of Arthur Griffith, for whom he bought a house; President of Liberal Jewish Synagogue; he was capped 10 times playing rugby for Ireland (1908--10); his son Michael Solomons, also a gynaecologist, participated prominently in the contraception referendum in Ireland, 1983 and wrote Life Cycle: Facts for Adults (1963) - a ground-breaking work of sex-education in Ireland.