Catharine Lorillard Wolfe

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Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (8 March 1828 - 4 April 1887), though all but forgotten today, transformed art museums in the United States through two bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her will gave her large collection of popular contemporary paintings to the Museum, supplementing this with a cash legacy of $200,000.

Her collection gave the Metropolitan its first significant representation of the kinds of paintings that appealed to the general public. Star attractions in her collection included Ludwig Knaus's "Holy Family" and Jules Breton's "A Grand Pardon in Brittany." The opening of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Wing displaying these popular paintings, coupled with the Museum's simultaneous acquisition by gift of Rosa Bonheur's enormously popular painting "The Horse Fair" (1853-55), brought to the Metropolitan, for the first time, large numbers of people from beyond the elite circles that traditionally constituted its audiences. The large crowds that Wolfe's collection attracted encouraged other American museums to similarly reach out to members of America's emerging urban middle classes.

Wolfe's gift of $200,000 was the first permanent endowment fund for buying art ever given to a major American museum. It helped launch the competitive cycle of giving that transformed museums in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, from the private pursuits of rich art lovers to professional institutions dedicated to educating large audiences and promoting modern art. Among the masterpieces of world art that the Metropolitan has since acquired using the Wolfe Fund are Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Madame Charpentier and her Children," Jacques-Louis David's "Death of Socrates," and Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream."

An obituary of Wolfe appeared in the New York Times on 5 April 1887. Details of her life can be found in her entry in "American National Biography."