Salomon van Abbé

The skilled drypoint artist Salomon van Abbé was born in Amsterdam in 1883 but moved to England when five years old, being made a naturalised citizen. He became well known for his original prints of everyday genre, but it was his splendid drypoint portraits which were to win him lasting fame. Van Abbé had developed his skills as a portrait artist through the teaching of W.P. Robins but developed a penetrating wit in his depiction of characters which parallelled that of his friend and relative, the famous Jersey artist and printmaker, Edmund Blampied.