Artist:  HENRY WOLF (American, 1852 - 1916)

Title:    "MY DAUGHTER JOSEPHINE" an original composition by Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862 – 1938) - 1910

Medium:   Original wood engraving on fine tissue paper

Signature:   Hand-Signed by the Artist in Pencil (also signed in the block)

Edition:   Limited Edition Proof; edition not noted 

Printer / Publisher:   The Artist & Harpers Weekly

Reference:   Panama Pacific International Exhibition 331; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1973.130.95

Provenance:   Hatay Stratton Fine Art, Northampton, Massachusettes

About the Artist:   Henry Wolf, born in Eckwersheim, Alsace, France in 1852, was the premier wood engraver working in America from the late 1800's through his death in 1916. He studied with J. Levy in Strasbourg, and came to New York in 1871, after exhibiting throughout Europe, Paris in particular.   Wolf primarily transformed art masterpieces into woodengraving for publication in the three most popular literary magazines of the time, Century Magazine, Harper's Monthly and Scribner's Magazine. The American artists he presented for public consumption included John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart and Frank Weston Benson, the Europeans included Jan Vermeer, Edouard Manet and Jean Leon Gerome.  Henry Wolf won the Grand Prize for printmaking at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. One of the last of the great reproductive wood engravers, he exhibited 144 wood engravings.   In the book "The Life & Work of Henry Wolf" by Ralph Clifton Smith, there is a quote from a letter received by Mr. Wolf in 1905 from W. Lewis Fraser, for many years connected with the art department of the Century Magazine, referring to Gerome, "'Many thanks for your letter. Gerome's expression as he looked at the proofs of your engravings of his paintings was " 'they are beautiful, Mr. Wolf knew better than my brushes what I wanted to do.' "  He began publishing original works of his own design, beginning in 1896 with Evening Star.  He worked until his unexpected death in 1916, at the age of 64.  One of the last great "New School" of American wood engravers, Henry Wolf won the only Grand Prize in printmaking at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where he exhibited 144 woodengravings.  Wolf died in New York in 1916.