Washington Square Arch

Gustave Wolff was an American imprssionist and tonalist. Wolff was born in Berlin, Germany on March 28th, 1863. His family emigrated in 1866 and settled in Saint Louis. Wolff studied at the Saint Louis School of Fine Arts and later became part of a regional "landscape school." Sometime in the 1910's Wolff began working in New York City and subsequently relocated there. He painted the still bucolic area on Northern Manhattan along with docks and city neighborhoods.

The painting Washington Square Arch was likely painted in the early 1920s. Washington Square was on of New York's most prominent public spaces.  Greenwich Village, surrounding The Square, was home to upper-middle class families. By the 1920s The Square was at the crossroads of tradition and transformation. The "Row" of red houses to the North, shown behind trees in the foreground, began housing artists, academics, and intellectuals. In addition, Wolff's painting further documents the shift from the past of horse-drawn carriages to the modernity of automibiles.

The arch, which stands as a sentinel in the painting, was made of marble and completed in 1895 to commemorate Washington's inauguration.

This painting is an excellent example of Wolff's range and flexibilty extending beyond his early roots as a landscape painter.