The Friend in Need, from "Illustrated London News"

This print reproduces a painting by the Victorian artist Rebecca Solomon whose brothers Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon were also artists. After studies at the Spitalfields School of Design, Rebecca became a draftsman on wood, illustrator, assistant to her brother Abraham, copyist for John Everett Millais, and exhibited her own oils and watercolors at the Royal Academy and other venues. In this contemporary genre subject, a destitute mother and child seek charity outside a public institution (a poster suggests a missionary society), but are shooed away by a beadle, as a sympathetic woman and girl offer assistance. The wood engraving appeared in the "Illustrated London News," to mark the painting’s exhibition in 1859 at the gallery of Louis Victor Flatou, a London dealer who offered art lovers an alternative to the Royal Academy.