Joseph Wolf (January 22, 1820 - April 20, 1899) was a
German artist who specialized in natural history illustration. He moved to the British Museum in 1848 and became the choice of illustrator for numerous explorers and collectors. He depicted animals accurately in life-like postures and has been considered one of the great pioneers of wildlife art. Sir
Edwin Landseer considered him
...without exception, the best all-round animal artist who ever lived.
Germany
Wolf was the son of a
farmer, and was born in Mörz near
Münstermaifeld, not far from the river
Moselle, in the
Eifel region. In his boyhood he was an assiduous student of
bird and
animal life, and showed a remarkable capacity as a draughtsman of
natural history subjects.
At the age of sixteen he went to
Koblenz to work for a firm of
lithographers, and then in 1840 he moved to
Frankfurt. Here he provided the illustrations for
Eduard Rüppell's
Birds of Northeast Africa.
He next went to
Darmstadt where he worked for the director of the natural history museum,
Johann Jakob Kaup. His talent was then recognized by
Hermann Schlegel of the
Natural History Museum, Leiden, who gave him employment as an illustrator.
London
In 1848 he moved to
London, where he worked at the
British Museum illustrating
George Robert Gray's
Genera of Birds. At the
Royal Academy he met
Sir Edwin Landseer, and he contributed to "Birds of Asia".
John Gould admired Wolf and would have liked him on his staff, but Wolf only contributed...
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