Joseph Wolf
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Joseph Wolf (January 22, 1820 - April 20, 1899) was a German artist.
Wolf was the son of a farmer, and was born at Münstermaifeld, on the river Moselle, in the Eifel region. In his boyhood he was an assiduous student of bird and animal life, and showed a remarkable capacity as a draughtsman of natural history subjects. At the age of sixteen he went to Koblenz to work for a firm of lithographers, and then in 1840 he moved to Frankfurt. Here he provided the illustrations for Eduard Rüppell's Birds of Northeast Africa. He next went to Darmstadt where he worked for the director of the natural history museum, Johann Jakob Kaup. His talent was then recognized by Hermann Schlegel of the Leiden museum, who gave him employment as an illustrator.
In 1848 he moved to London, where he worked at the British Museum illustrating George Robert Gray's Genera of Birds. He remained in London until his death. He made many drawings for the Zoological Society of London, and a very large number of illustrations for books on natural history and on travel in various countries; but he also won a considerable success as a painter.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
