Marie Soldat

A cabinet card portrait of the Austrian violinist Marie Soldat (1863-1955). A pupil of Joseph Joachim, she was active in orchestral and chamber music in the Vienna of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Born Marie Soldat at Graz in southeast Austria in 1863, she was discovered by Brahms when she was a girl of 15 and for many years she was the only woman to play his Violin Concerto. In 1889 she married a lawyer named Roeger, after which she was known as Madame Soldat-Roeger. In 1895 she founded the celebrated, all-female Soldat-Roeger Quartet.

She died on 30 September 1955.

Photographed by Elliott and Fry of 55 Bakers Street, London.