Take a trip to New York City through the brush of Gustave Wolff, an American Impressionist well-known in his day who is now, due to a recently-discovered body of work, being reappraised. The Wichita Art Museum is delighted to have the opportunity to mount the first recent large-scale exhibition of his work. Wolff (1863-1935) was an artist of tremendous depth and range, creating poetic scenes based on the topography around New York City. His lessons under Paul Cornoyer and the influence of William Merritt Chase helped to bring out the best of his underlying vision–his ability to see the metaphysical in the mundane. With equal poise, he captures the light and dark moods of urban Manhattan.

Born in Germany in 1863, he came to America and settled in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he received his first formal training. By the late 1880s a landscape school was beginning to form in Saint Louis that would become the city’s artistic hallmark. Its members stressed poetic mood over topographical naturalism. Gustave Wolff, a student of the School of Fine Arts, and especially of Paul Cornoyer, followed his teacher as a specialist in tonal landscapes.

A testament of Wolf’s recognition was a description of him in a profile of prominent citizens of Saint Louis in the weekly newspaper, The Mirror, “His paintings at their most veristic have a glamour, in a certain wistful key. His ‘atmosphere’ is romantic, with probably a touch of Teutonic philosophizing. Wolff’s landscapes are as strong, as tender, as deeply seen as those of any American painter.”

The exhibition was organized courtesy of Hawthorne Fine Art, New York and made possible by TCK–The Trust Company of Kansas and the Friends of the Wichita Art Museum.