Edward Solly

Solly was a younger brother in an English merchant family headed by Isaac Solly that were engaged in the Baltic timber trade, with offices in the city of London.The biographical notes are largely drawn from Frank Herrmann, 1972. The English as Collectors: "Edward Solly" pp. 202–08; Herrmann rediscovered Solly's career in articles in The Connoisseur April, May, July, September 1967, September 1968 and April 1971. As Non-Conformists the family suffered social restrictions in the higher levels of English society. During the Napoleonic Wars the firm secured immense contracts for the supply of Prussian and Polish oak timber and ship's stores from the Baltic. Solly removed to Stockholm and then in 1813 to Berlin, overseeing the family firm's bulk purchases on the part of the European continent not covered by Napoleon's Continental System. Through his acquaintance with 'Fighting Charlie' Vane he was present at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. Afterwards he presented a fine sword to Captain Thomas Harris inscribed with the legend From Edward Solly To Thomas Noel Harris, In Commemoration Of Their Fellowship At The Memorable Battle Of Leipzig Of The 18th And 19th Of October 1813.

Due to his familiarity with the Northern Lowlands, Solly volunteered to carry the news of Napoleon's defeat to London. The journey took him fifteen days through enemy territory. He sailed to England across the North Sea on board a Dutch herring boat and arrived in London twenty-four hours before the official messenger.{{Cite web|url=https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22277/lot/82/|title=A Very Fine And Rare Presentation Sabre From Edward Solly To Thomas Harris In Commemoration Of Their Fellowship At The Memorable Battle Of Leipzig By Webb, Piccadilly, London, Dated 1813|date=1 April 2015|publisher=Bonhams|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151121085128/https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22277/lot/82/|archive-date=21 November 2015|url-status=}}

In Berlin he married the daughter of Auguste Krüger in 1816. His great personal charm and intelligence opened the highest social circles, and as his business affairs prospered he was on good terms with ministry officials, the Prussian court, artists,Marsha L. Morton, "Johann Erdmann Hummel and the Flemish Primitives: the forging of a Biedermeier style and intellectuals", Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1989. connoisseurs and intellectuals.Herrmann 1972.

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In his travels he began to take an interest in paintings. The social turmoil of the wars and the dissolution of monasteries brought many works of art onto the market, and Solly proved a discerning buyer, concerned with the provenanceAn outstanding provenance is that of Filippo Lippi's signed Adoration commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici for the family chapel in Palazzo Medici and sold in 1814.([http://www.palazzo-medici.it/mediateca/en/Scheda_Adorazione_di_Palazzo_Medici,_di_Filippo_Lippi Palazzo Medici Adoration]). and documentation of works he bought, to an extent unusual in his generation.Frank Herrmann, 1991. "Peel and Solly: two nineteenth-century art collectors and their sources of supply", Journal of the History of Collections, 3.1 pp. 81–96. Though he owned one of the finest interior views by Pieter de HoochSold from the Berlin museum about 1830, it was sold in 1992 for £4.4 million ([https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-market--sold-at-face-value-the-little-girl-in-the-masters-picture-is-ugly-so-probably-the-secondbest-de-hooch-in-the-world-fetched-just-pounds-44m-1564683.html Geraldine Norman, "The Art Market", The Independent, 20 December 1992]). and possibly Vermeer's Lady Standing at a Virginal (National Gallery, London),[http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/lady_standing_at_a_virginal.html Essential Vermeer: Lady Standing at a Virginal] both falling within the desirable contemporary category of "cabinet pictures", he was not drawn to the Seicento and Baroque Old Masters that formed the main other interest of contemporary collectors and connoisseurs, but rather to the early Byzantinising Italian paintings of the 13th and 14th centuries, which had been preserved largely in the churches and monasteries for which they had been commissioned. He had a judicious eye also for early Netherlandish painting: his most famous purchase in that field were the wings of the Ghent Altarpiece of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, which was sold by the cathedral canons soon after it had been returned to Ghent in 1816; Solly purchased the panels through the paintings dealer Nieuwenhuys.One of the Solly paintings at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, it was returned to Saint Bavo, Ghent, as part of German reparations under the Treaty of Versailles.

Solly and the firm suffered a major setback when twenty of their merchantmen, running the Napoleonic blockade on behalf of the Allies, were captured by Danes within the Napoleonic system and taken to Copenhagen. Only after years of pressuring was any compensation effected.

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Solly continued collecting nevertheless, increasingly with the idea that his paintings might be purchased by the Prussian State, to form a public collection.Maria Dietl, 1993. "The Picture Gallery of Berlin: The Formation of the Solly Collection," in iovanni Morelli e la cultura dei conoscitori. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Bergamo 1987, Bergamo, pp. 49–59. In 1815 Frederick William III had bought the remains of the Giustiniani collection for just such a purpose, but resisted this purchase. Solly's financial situation became straitened. Through the mediation of Benjamin Wegner, a friend and agent of Edward Solly, negotiations on a purchase of the collection by the Prussian state began in 1820, and in 1821 Solly's entire collection of some 3,000 pictures was bought for the newly founded Alte Nationalgalerie. 677 paintings were selected for display in the museum; others were hung in the Hohenzollern palaces to replace those that had been removed to the museum. Though Solly was an early admirer of early Netherlandish painting, Solly's first collection was mostly Italian, including Raphael's Solly Madonna (illustration, right). Under National Socialism, some of Solly's Italian pictures were traded for those by native German masters and, some through Duveen, found their way into the Samuel Henry Kress and Andrew W. Mellon collections; thus Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna of the NicheMeryle Secrest, 2004. Duveen: a life in art, p. 457; [http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg4/gg4-433-prov.html National Gallery: Madonna and Child, Fra Filippo Lippi] and Duccio's Nativity triptych are both now in the National Gallery, Washington.Carpaccio's Flight into Egypt at the National Gallery also came from Solly's collection, de-accessioned by the Kaiser Friedrich Museum ([http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=32&detail=prov National Gallery: Carpaccio, Flight into Egypt])

Following the successful sale that he had urged so long, in 1821 Solly moved to London, where he retired from shipping and dealt in works of art, which filled his house at 7, Curzon Street, Mayfair.The architect of the Berlin museum Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the art historian Gustav Waagen were his guests there, in 1821 and 1835 (Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, Letter I). His interests narrowed to the High Renaissance."Mr. Solly is one of those rare characters who have attained the complete conviction that the works of the historical painters of the time of Raphael are at a height of perfection with which no others can bear a comparison" (Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England, London 1838, vol. II, letter XVI dated 10 July 1838, which includes descriptions of some paintings in Solly's London collection) He acted on occasion as advisor to John Bowes, whose collection forms the Bowes Museum.Herrmann 1972. Often sensing himself in financial trouble, in eight London sales between 1825 and 1837 Solly sold paintings, drawings and engravings, according to Frits Lugt,Frits Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques; Hermann 1972. although the records now online through the Getty Provenance Index show a total of 1306 lots in many auctions, with small paintings of the Dutch Golden Age predominating, at least numerically, in a very varied range of works.[http://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb Getty Provenance Database] search page – enter "Solly" for "Buyer or Seller Name"]

When the cream of his collection, those paintings he had reserved for himself, were sold by order of his heirs, his daughters Sarah and Lavinia and his son Edward Solly F.R.S.,Edward Solly, F.R.S. (1843), F.S.A. 11 October 1819 – 2 April 1886) a professor of chemistry, was a book collector, whose library was sold at Sotheby's after his death in 1886; he was a frequent contributor to Notes and Queries on genealogical and literary points, and a founder of the Folk-Lore Society (Obit. The Antiquary 13, 1886, p. 228; Solly 1910). at Christie's, 8 May 1847,There were 42 lots, most of which had appeared in the privately printed A Descriptive Catalogue of some Paintings of the Rafaelle Period; the sale was reported in The Art Union, 1847, pp215f (Solly 1910). All the catalogue descriptions and prices are now online at the Getty Provenance Index. a few were held back, or "bought in" at the sale when they failed to reach their reserve, as was one of the two works attributed to "Lionardo da Vinci" (sic). Sarah Solly donated five of the paintings to the National Gallery in 1879,Jordanna Bailkin, 2004. "Picturing feminism, selling liberalism", in Bettina Messias Carbonell, Museum studies: an anthology of contexts, p. 271 note 29. including a Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children by Lorenzo Lotto (bought in at the 1847 sale), and two Dutch Golden Age paintings.[http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/lorenzo-lotto-portrait-of-giovanni-della-volta-with-his-wife-and-children/*/key-facts National Gallery "key facts"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110803184046/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/lorenzo-lotto-portrait-of-giovanni-della-volta-with-his-wife-and-children/*/key-facts |date=3 August 2011 }} for the Lotto; a search for "Solly" produces all five.

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Category:English art collectors

Category:English art dealers

Category:1776 births

Category:1844 deaths

Category:Expatriates in the Kingdom of Prussia