Raphael Meldola (1849–1915)

Solomon Joseph Solomon painted this portrait of Raphael Meldola in 1913, the year before the sitter's death. Meldola — chemist, entomologist, and evolutionary biologist — was a significant figure in Victorian and Edwardian science: a fellow of the Royal Society, a pioneer of synthetic dye chemistry, and a close associate of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Solomon was himself a complex figure at the intersection of artistic tradition and modernity: a successful Royal Academician who also developed camouflage techniques for the British Army in the First World War. The Royal Society's acquisition reflects the institution's long practice of commissioning or accepting portraits of its fellows, creating one of Britain's most important documentary collections of scientific portraiture. Solomon's portrait of Meldola belongs to the tradition of institutional commemoration that sustained demand for formal portraiture well into the twentieth century.

Institutional portraits for learned societies typically demand a higher degree of formal dignity than private commissions — the sitter must be legible as a representative figure as well as an individual. Solomon's technique combined academic figure-painting discipline with the looser, more luminous touch he had absorbed from his awareness of Impressionist developments. The handling of the sitter's face would balance likeness with an authority appropriate to the Royal Society's commemorative purpose.