Solomon J. Solomon painting to be inaugurated at Jewish Museum, Camden
Submitted to: Events
Posted: March 15 2007
ADD COMMENT
March 15 2007 (Jewswire.com) - On Thursday 22 March the Jewish Museum, Camden Town will celebrate the arrival of a portrait of Nina Davis Salaman (1877 - 1925) into its collection. The oil painting, by eminent Jewish artist Solomon J.Solomon (1860 - 1927), was painted in 1918, the year of his Presidency of the Royal Society of British Artists. It was in the ownership of the Salaman family until the recent death of Nina Salaman’s youngest daughter, Esther Salaman, the renowned voice teacher of Hampstead, NW London.
Dr Jeremy Schonfield, historian and family friend, will speak on Nina Salaman's contribution to Hebrew scholarship while Peter Hamburger, Salaman’s grandson, will talk about her domestic life and the circumstances surrounding the presentation of the picture.
The portrait, which is currently on loan to the Jewish Museum, captures Nina Salaman in her prime - a woman of outstanding beauty, intellect and character. The Jewish Museum is proud that her descendants have chosen to lend her portrait to the Museum.
Biography of Nina Salaman
Nina Davis was born in Derby in 1877. Educated in Hebrew and Jewish Studies by her father, she was publishing translations of medieval Hebrew poetry in the Jewish press while still in her teens. At 24, she married the physicist Redcliff Salaman and brought up their five children in a kosher home in the village of Barley, in Hertfordshire. Throughout her short life, she wrote books and composed verses, and many of her poems and translations are included in the Routledge festival prayer books still used today.
Salaman’s friendships with men like Israel Zangwill and Solomon Schechter, the intelligentsia of Anglo-Jewry, led to further translations from Hebrew into English. She was active in the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage which campaigned to improve the status and education of women in the synagogue and the community. In 1919 she became the only woman to preach in an orthodox synagogue when she spoke on the weekly portion at the Cambridge Hebrew Congregation.
Nina Salaman died tragically young of cancer, at the age of 47. Redcliffe Salaman, famous for his research into the genetics and diseases of the potato, lived on until1955. Their five children all achieved distinction in their chosen professions.
Venue: The Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert Street, Camden Town, London NW1 7NB Tel. 020 7284 1997 www.jewishmuseum.org.uk
For further information and illustrations, please contact Dina Wosner on: 020 7284 1997 or marketing@jewishmuseum.org.uk
ADD COMMENT
