Edgar Isaac Seligman (14 April 1867 – 27 September 1958) was an accomplished American-born British painter, who exhibited at the Fine Art Society and Royal Academy and was a highly competitive épée, foil, and sabre fencer.
Seligman competed in five Olympiads and won the silver medal in team épée competition as a member of the British fencing team in 1906 (Intercalated), 1908, and 1912, despite not making his Olympic debut until age 39. At the British Fencing Championships, Seligman was a strong fencer on all three weapons, épée, sabre, and foil, and was the only person to have won the British title in each weapon at least twice. Recognized as a team leader and champion, he served as the British fencing team's Captain from 1912 to 1924.
Biography
Seligman was born in San Francisco, California, in the United States, to German-American parents, and was Jewish. His father was Leopold Seligman, a businessman and banker who headed a London banking firm. Edgar was a nephew, as his father Leopold was a brother to the founders of the New York banking firm J. & W. Seligman & Co., initially headed primarily by Bavarian immigrant Joseph Seligman, and his brothers Jesse, James, Edgar's father Leopold, William and Henry. In 1851, Leopold and his brothers set up a store in San Francisco, the city where Edgar was born in 1867. Edgar's immediate family, headed by his father Leopold and his mother Margeurite, moved to London, England, around 1869, when he was two.
With the Imperial Yeomanry, in his early thirties, Seligman took part in the Boer War, occurring between 1899-1902. His brother was Brigadier General Herbert Seligman who served in the Royal Artillery.
Edgar became a British citizen by naturalisation around 1905 at the age of 38, which required him to forswear allegiance to the United States. As he travelled relatively often, particularly as a member of the British Fencing team, British citizenship was simpler to maintain, though he retained respect for his native country and their athletes.
Marriage
Having established a national reputation in amateur fencing in the 1906 Athens Olympics, on October 12, 1909, Seligman was married to George Joseph Mosenthal's daughter, Georgette Alice Henriette Mosenthal. They were married with a traditional ceremony at the Synagogue at 34 Upper Berkely Street, one of the oldest in Great Britain, now known as the West London Synagogue. Edgar was forty-two, and Georgette was twelve years younger, and both had lived and possibly met on Queen's Gate, a street in South Kensington, London. The reception was at the home of Mrs. George (Margeurite Biedermann b. 1859 in Paris) Mosenthal, the Bride's mother, at 190 Queen's Gate, London. Seligman's brother, then Captain H.S. Seligman of the Royal Horse Artillery was best man. In 1907, Georgette was the subject of a portrait in oil by P. A. Laszlo. Her father George Joseph Samuel Mosenthal (1852-1912) was a prominent Jewish businessman and merchant, active in London high society, who was a member of an association of Capetown Merchants that ruled on the continuation of mail to England's Cape Colony in South Africa in 1886.
Wife's family
George Joseph Samuel Mosenthal (b. 1853, Graaff-Reinet, South Africa), was Edgar's father-in-law and the son of Adolph Mosenthal. Adolph was the brother of Joseph Mosenthal, an 1839 German-Jewish immigrant to Capetown, South Africa. Adolph, with his brothers Joseph and later Julius set up the business Mosenthal Brothers in the Capetown area in the mid-1800's. They eventually established themselves in agricultural export including goats, sheep, and ostriches, and evolved into gold and diamond mining in association with several Consolidated Mines including DeBeers. In September 1912, when George Joseph Samuel Mosenthal died in Middlesex, outside of London, his fortune was estimated at 500,000 pounds, very roughly £73 million (pounds), or $95.7 million dollars in today's currency. Georgette's mother, Mrs. George (Margeurite Biedermann) Mosenthal (b. 1859, Paris), had been the subject of a portrait in oil by American Painter John Singer Sargent, now on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Around 1890, she had been painted in white in a full-length portrait by Jewish London painter and Royal Academician Solomon Joseph Solomon.