Joseph Wolf
| Joseph Wolf | |
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Joseph Wolf with a Eurasian hobby (Falco subbuteo)
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| Born | 21 January 1820 |
| Died | 20 April 1899 (aged 79) |
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | Natural history illustration |
| Notable work | 340 illustrations for ZSL Proceedings |
Joseph Wolf (21 January 1820 – 20 April 1899) was a German artist who specialized in natural history illustration. He moved to the British Museum in 1848 and became the preferred illustrator for explorers and naturalists including David Livingstone, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. Wolf depicted animals accurately in lifelike postures and is considered one of the great pioneers of wildlife art. Sir Edwin Landseer thought him "...without exception, the best all-round animal artist who ever lived"'.
Joseph was the first son of a farmer, Anton Wolf, and was born in Mörz near Münstermaifeld then in Rhenish Prussia, not far from the river Moselle, in the Eifel region. He was originally called Mathias but later went by the name of Joseph. In his boyhood he assiduously studied bird and animal life, and showed a remarkable capacity as a draughtsman of natural history subjects. He showed an early talent for art by cutting paper silhouettes of birds and animals which he pasted onto windows. The village folk termed him a "bird fool" (Vögelfanger). He later took an interest in hunting. He made himself brushes from the fur of a stone marten, and drew illustrations of birds that he raised from the nest or found near his home. He took a special interest in birds of prey, and considered art as a career but realized at the age of sixteen that he needed more training to be professional. With support from his father he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographers, Gebrüder Becker at Koblenz. Here he found his first illustrated ornithology book (by Johann Conrad Susemihl— he went on to illustrate a later edition of it—in the collection of a trader with an interest in birds, and was surprised by the poor quality of the plates. He returned home after three years of apprenticeship, and for a while took up a temporary job with the village headman in searching homes for illegally concealed liquor.
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