Josef (Joseph) Wolf

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Josef (Joseph) Wolf

by William Logsdail
oil on board, circa 1887
14 1/8 in. x 9 7/8 in. (360 mm x 250 mm) overall
Purchased, 2016
Primary Collection
NPG 7029

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • William Logsdail (1859-1944), Painter. Artist or producer of 2 portraits, Sitter in 1 portrait.

This portraitback to top

Adhering to his usual pattern of incorporating figure studies of his friends, Logsdail completed this head and shoulder portrait of Wolf as a preparatory study for his major oil painting, Bank and the Royal Exchange, which he exhibited at the RA in 1887 (now located in a private collection). A lively and affectionate portrait, the heavily bearded Wolf is shown wearing his customary hat and smoking a traditional German pipe. In the finished group painting, like his friend Waterhouse, Wolf would feature in the guise of a passenger, in his case as a bearded man reading a newspaper, on top of the omnibus. Logsdail would later reveal to a patron that when it came to painting the portrait figures on the bus, he had treated them ‘with almost the finish of careful miniature work’. The picture now under consideration was formerly owned by the prominent surgeon Sir George Buckston Browne, and has a page of a letter pasted to the back board of the work. This was written by Logsdail to Buckston Browne, and chides him for not visiting.

Events of 1887back to top

Current affairs

Queen Victoria celebrates her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years of her reign.
In what becomes known as 'Bloody Sunday', or the Trafalgar Square Riot, the police attack a meeting of the Social Democratic Federation, led by among others) Elizabeth Reynolds, John Burns, Annie Besant and Robert Cunninghame-Graham, killing three and injuring more than 200 crowd members.

Art and science

A Study in Scarlet, the first of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson, is published. One of only four novels (there were a further 56 short stories) featuring Holmes, the mystery turns around the discovery of a corpse in Brixton.
The essayist and critic Walter Pater publishes Imaginary Portraits in which he consolidates his doctrine of Aestheticism, 'art for art's sake'.

International

Britain ratifies the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, thus accepting the terms of the International Copyright Act (1886), which abolishes the requirement to register foreign works and introduces an exclusive right to import or produce translations.
The British annex Zululand; it becomes part of Natal in 1897.

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