Estella Frances Solomons

Estella Solomons was born into a prominent Jewish Dublin family. She first trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, Chelsea School of Art in London and Colorossi's in Paris. A visit to a major Rembrandt exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in 1906 inspired her to take up printmaking.

From 1910 Solomons worked from a studio in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street). Her husband Séamus O'Sullivan wrote of the studio: '… with its pleasantly-arranged throne and curtains, it was not only a centre of artistic activity and goodly conversation, but also a centre of quiet, of calm; a place of refuge for many whose political and national activities had brought them a very undesirable amount of notice in "the bad times".'

As well as painting portraits, Solomons made etchings in her studio. She was one of few Irish artists who owned an etching press and printed from her own plates. Many of her prints depict the old streets Dublin and a number were used as illustrations for D.L. Kelleher's The Glamour of Dublin published in 1928. Solomons and O'Sullivan collaborated on The Dublin Magazine, a literary journal founded in 1923. Estella Solomons had two solo exhibitions, at her Pearse Street studio in 1926, and at the Dublin Painters Gallery in 1931.