Designated the ‘poet-painter’, Joseph
Wolf was one of the most accomplished natural history artists working in London
during the mid-19th century. Born and educated
in Prussia, Wolf began his career as an apprentice to Gebrüder Becker,
lithographers at Koblenz, at the age of sixteen.
After a few years he returned home to work on a series of small, detailed bird
drawings which brought him recognition and a commission to illustrate the
naturalist Eduard Ruppell’s book on the birds of Africa. Commissions from the
Darmstadt Museum and the prominent ornithologist Hermann Schlegel soon
followed.

By the time Wolf migrated
to London in 1848, he was an established natural history painter. He began
working at the natural history department of the British Museum illustrating
George Robert Gray’s Genera of Birds.
Having come to the attention of Sir Edward Landseer, Wolf exhibited at the
Royal Academy. He provided illustrations for the journals of the Zoological
Society of London and the British Ornithologists Union, numerous travel books by David Livingstone, Henry
Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace, and made
significant contributions to John Gould’s The Birds of Asia and The Birds of Great Britain, and Daniel Giraud Elliott’s
Phasianeidae (pheasants), Paradiseida
(birds of paradise) and Life and Habits
of Wild Animals.

Wolf’s
Zoological Sketches were commissioned by the Zoological Society of London and published
in parts from 1856-67 with an impressive list of subscribers including Queen
Victoria, aristocrats, artists, institutions and businesses. The Society sought
to provide a record of the many rare species kept in its Vivarium with both accuracy
and artistry. Wolf was particularly noted for his explorations of animals and
birds in relation to environment and his treatment of his subject as distinct
and individual rather than an exemplar of species or extension of human
sentiment.

Wolf’s skill
was appreciated as much by scientists as by laymen whilst his long and
successful career provided both encouragement and inspiration for other
painters entering the natural history field .These lithographs are an enduring testament
to a passionate and lyrical talent heralded by critics and colleagues alike as
the ‘greatest living animal painter’.