First Class: The Meeting

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.