Gustave Wolff

2 Urban Nature: Gustave Wolff ( 1863 –1935 ) , American Impressionist in New York t I n the autumn of 1913 , the German Association for Culture featured the work of Gustave Wolff (1863– 1935) in one of the artist’s first New York City exhibitions held at the Yorkville Library. The New York Times stated, “Mr. Wolff is better known in the West and in Europe than in New York, and this is the first oppor- tunity to see a collection of his work in this city.” 1 A painter of Impressionist and Tonalist landscapes, Wolff arrived in New Yorkmost likely within the year prior to this exhibition. However, by the 1910’s, the American art scene was witnessing a shift toward modernism. American Impressionism, which began as a rebellion against conservative academic artistic standards, was now endorsed by the National Academy of Design, while urban realism and abstraction became the new form of artistic protest. Having matured artistically around the turn of the century, just before this major shift, Gustave Wolff remained committed throughout his career to capturing the everyday poetry of the rural and urban landscape. Raised in St. Louis after his family immigrated to the United States in 1866 from Berlin, Germany, Wolff studied at the St. Louis School of FineArts andwithPaul Cornoyer, F. HumphreyWoolrych, andFrederickOakes Sylvester. By 1901, Wolff had become the preeminent painter in St. Louis and a frequent exhibitor with the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, the Society of Western Artists, and the Two-By-Four Club, leading one critic to write: “If the maxim that artists are born, not made, be true, it applies most decidedly to Mr. Wolf [sic], whose training was as unsystematic and interrupted as his career was subjected to influences most unfavorable to his artistic development. But in spite of all difficulties he has forged his way to the front until his work has become of such importance that an exhibit of Western Artists would be incomplete without his admirable landscapes.” 2 By 1906, Wolff was considered one of the leading landscape painters in St. Louis. It was in that year that two of his paintings were accepted to the Paris Salon. One humorous and rather cynical article discussed Wolff’s success: “Gustav[sic] Wolff of St. Louis, who does the fine art decoration of the billboards 3 behind which you threw the tin cans this spring, has just had a bit of luck . . . [T]he people who sniffed when they saw Mr. Wolff sitting under a screen and daubing the billboards are surprised to learn that two pictures of his have now been accepted by and are hung conspicuously in the Paris salon. He is known in Paris as a landscape painter of ability and exquisite workmanship.” 4 Like many American painters in this period, Wolff traveled to the Netherlands for further artistic train- ing. In the late nineteenth century, there was a growing fascination in the United States with Dutch Art of the seventeenth-century, which became widely collected. At the same time, more affordable works by con- temporary Dutch artists working in The Hague were increasingly collected especially by patrons in St. Louis. Guided by Dutch Old Master depictions and romanticized literary descriptions, American artists visiting the Netherlands produced images of domesticity, strong communities, and religious values. 5 Having trained in St. Louis, where Dutch artistic influence was strong, Wolff had already adopted the loose, confident brush- work and atmospheric effects that characterize Dutch painting. When Wolff arrived in New York City in the early 1910s, he would have encountered the group of urban realist painters who dominated the New York art scene. The Eight, or the artists of the Ashcan School, were known for their frank, un-idealized depictions of common people and the industrial energy of New York. Their works presented the appealing, yet gritty reality of this urban environment and the transitory nature of the city. 6 Wolff’s paintings of everyday life often depict scenes of leisure, typical of the Impressionist manner. However, expressing the character of the modernmetropolis was also a significant statement of his work. Wolff’s light-filled images such as Washington Heights Bridge, New York [ fig . 1]; and Approaching the Wheelock Mansion, West 160th Street, New York [ fig . 2 ] express the joy of leisure and relaxation that was sought amid the density and grittiness of New York. Like the paintings of American Impressionist William Merritt