Even as a young man, Ben Solowey was practical. He came to Europe to study and learn, as well as to travel with friends, but he understood that it was crucial for him to use the time to help himself when he returned home. When Ben received permission to paint at the Louvre, his goal there appears to be to learn the palette of Old Master still lifes and game painting, as these works were very popular with the American public at the time. According to Ben’s custom declarations on his return to the States, we know he painted at least two copies of “flower painting.”
These Old Master works were strikingly different than his own work at the time. Where his personal works were colorful and alternating between an Impressionist style and a Modernist style, the Old Master works were quite dark and very detailed. In addition to copying paintings at the Louvre, he also collected black and white reproductions of similar works to use as source material when he returned to Philadelphia, where he set himself up as a decorative painter.
The reproductions of these dark hued works in 1924 were not very good, and they only helped with the composition rather than color. But Ben tacked these poor copies up next to his easel and for three years supplied Old Master style canvases to interior decorators and furniture stores such as J. B. Van Sciver Co. While he did not sign these works and they were not really “his,” he understood their value and set fairly high prices for the period on these works. His cousin, Phil Frank, remembered that when Ben refused to haggle on the prices for these canvases, he found himself paying for Ben’s meals from time to time.
