This pair of paintings, copies of larger originals, is Abraham Solomon’s earliest attempt at representing scenes from modern life after more than a decade of focusing on historical and literary subjects. Although he used suitable quotations from Shakespeare as subtitles for both pictures, these works reflect the social impact of new mass transit in the Victorian era. The railroad network expanded at a dramatic rate throughout the nineteenth century, becoming accessible to individuals at varying economic levels. Here, an unexpected romance begins in the close quarters of the first-class coach, where a young woman and a naval officer engage in a flirtation mediated by a young woman’s father or guardian. Meanwhile, in the second-class coach, the signs posted inside suggest that the young sailor at the center is about to leave his widowed mother to emigrate and seek a new life in Australia.

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   Painting, oil on panel, First Class: The Meeting, by Abraham Solomon, 1855. Depicts passengers in a first class railway carriage. A young man in naval uniform leans forward to talk to an elderly gentleman and a young woman, who listen attentively. The gentleman, balding with grey side whiskers, holds a newspaper in his left hand, and is wearing a glove on his right. The woman is wearing a bonnet and hooded shawl, and is sewing. On the seats are blankets, gloves, a parasol and a bunch of red roses. Through the carriage window is a valley with hills and trees. Signed by the artist at bottom right. Framed and glazed. Also known as The Return (First Class).

   Abraham Solomon’s First Class, The Meeting was completed in 1855. It demonstrates the ways in which artists exploited the confined space of the railway carriage to explore social class and relationships between the sexes. A young naval officer is engaged in earnest conversation with a young woman and her companion, suggesting that this is the beginning of a love story that will end happily.

   This wasn’t Solomon’s first attempt at this subject. In an earlier version, which was shown at the Royal Academy’s 1854 exhibition, the young man wasn’t a virtuous naval officer, but an angler returning from a fishing holiday and, scandalously and against any sense of Victorian middle-class propriety, was talking directly to the young woman while her chaperone slept. Critics complained that the subject was vulgar, so the following year Solomon reworked it in this, more appropriate version.

   The painting is also known as First Class: The Return and The Return: First Class.

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   Solomon began his career with historical and literary subjects. This canvas brought the artist his first critical success when exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1854, marking a shift in his work to contemporary subject matter. The flirtatious nature of the encounter was deemed scandalous by Solomon’s audience, and he felt obliged to paint a second version in which the older man is awake and sits between the couple, talking to the younger man. Frame: running moulding with moulded ornament, gilded. Britain, mid 19th century

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