The gossip page

Salomon van Abbé (1883-1955), also known as Jack van Abbé or Jack Abbey, was an artist, etcher and illustrator of books and magazines. Abbé came from a Jewish family and was born in Amsterdam, but moved to England when he was five years old and became a naturalised citizen. He added the accent to his name, becoming van Abbé. He studied at the Central School of Art and at the London County Council School of Photo-engraving and Lithography at Bolt Court, where he met Edmund Blampied (later his brother-in-law and excellently represented in Te Papa's collection), Robert Charles Peter and John Nicolson, all fellow etchers.

In 1923, Abbé was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), as well as President of the London Sketch Club and a member of the Art Workers' Guild. He was awarded a bronze medal at the Paris Salon in 1939.

Salomon van Abbé was noted for his drypoints of the legal profession, and much of his commercial work was to design the dust jackets for books from top London publishers. These included the first "Saint" novel by Leslie Charteris (Meet the Tiger, Ward Lock, 1928), an early Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train, (William Collins, Sons, 1928) and the first two novels by Dorothy L. Sayers (T. Fisher Unwin).

Like Blampied, van Abbé excelled in outstandingly executed prints which dealt, often wittily, with social interaction. The drypoint The gossip page is a prime exemplar, and until recently, before the decline in hard copy newspapers, its theme would have been immediately intelligible to most people. The central figure, a very respectably dressed, elderly, middle-class woman, is holding forth on a juicy morsel contained in the gossip column of a newspaper. Not only her friend (who looks like an identical twin, possibly van Abbé is suggesting that all gossips are the same), but the stout maid are galvanised by the disclosure. Indeed, so much so that the latter has at least momentarily neglected her domestic duties. What is being revealed? That's your guess as well as mine, and full credit to van Abbé for deftly encouraging us to speculate.

See: Wikipedia, 'Salomon van Abbé', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_van_Abb%C3%A9

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   June 2008