An Octave for Mr Ernest Hart at Sir Henry Thompson's house.

This work appears to be a closely related or second version of Solomon Joseph Solomon's composition depicting the octave dinner given by Sir Henry Thompson in honour of Ernest Hart, both painted in or around 1897. Thompson's octave dinners were celebrated gatherings of Victorian intellectual and professional London: physicians, scientists, artists, and public figures who gathered in groups of exactly eight. Solomon's decision to paint the scene — and possibly produce more than one version — reflects the social significance of these evenings as a defining institution of late Victorian professional culture. Oil paint as a medium here (as opposed to other studies) suggests this may have been a more resolved working or a separate commission for one of the participants. The Wellcome Collection, attentive to the visual culture of medicine, holds the work as a document of medical social life.

As with the related composition, this oil painting requires simultaneous management of multiple individual likenesses, interior lighting, and the material culture of the dining table. Solomon's grouping of figures and handling of candlelight effects across faces and glassware is the primary technical challenge.