Gustave Wolff

4 The selection of works in this exhibition reveals the striking breadth of Wolff’s oeuvre, which ranges from light-filled Impressionist works (for example, A Quiet Field ; Portrait of the Artist’s Wife [ figs . 5 and 6] ) and expressive Tonalist compositions ( Close of Day, Harlem Tenements; Through the Clouds [ figs . 7 and 8] ) to darker urban subjects ( Across the Hudson, Northern Manhattan ; Dyckman Street Docks, Manhattan [ figs . 9 and 10] ) . As the demand for city scenes relevant to urban dwellers increased in the 1910’s, GustaveWolff was able to continue his study and depiction of the built environment. And as modernist trends such as abstraction infiltrated American art, Wolff maintained an allegiance to the tenets of Impressionism and Tonalism, which better portrayed the texture of the modern urban experience. C a r ol i n e G i l l a s p i e Researcher, Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC Not e s 1. “Art at Home and Abroad,” New York Times (November 9, 1913): SM15. 2. George Julian Zolnay, ed., Illustrated Handbook of the Missouri Art Exhibit Made under the Auspices of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild (St. Louis, MO: The Missouri Art Commission, 1905), 21. 3. This use of “billboards” may refer to murals, which all three of Wolff’s aforementioned teachers had included in their oeuvres. 4. The Minneapolis Journal (June 15, 1906): 24. 5. The best source on American artists in the Netherlands is Annette Stott, ed., Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880–1914 (Savannah, GA: Telfair Books, 2009). 6. Important sources on the Ashcan artists include Rebecca Zurier, Robert W. Snyder, and Virginia M. Mecklenberg, Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1995); and Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 7. Zurier, et al., Metropolitan Lives , 130-134. 8. For a discussion of the Ashcan School’s frequent depictions of waterfront scenes, see Ibid., 95-97. 9. Margaret Breuning, “Delightful Decorations,” New York Evening Post (January 27, 1923). This brief article mentions Wolff’s “good waterside pictures.” 9. Across the Hudson, Northern Manhattan Oil on board, 8 x 12 in., Signed lower right, Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC, NY 10. Dyckman Street Docks, Manhattan Oil on board, 8 x 12 in., Signed lower right, Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC, NY 11. Shadows on the Snow, University Heights, New York City Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in., Signed lower right, Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC, NY 12. Winter Landscape Oil on canvas, 29 1 / 8 x 39 3 / 8 inches in., Signed and dated 1907, lower right, Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC, NY