Edward Wolfe 1897-1982
Interior, 1919, 1919
oil on canvas
29¾ x 19¾ ins
signed and dated



Edward Wolfe was born in Johannesburg, at the age of nineteen, he emigrated to London. In 1917, soon after his arrival, he was admitted to the Slade School of Fine Art. The Bloomsbury Group was then at its creative peak, and that same year, Wolfe joined Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop. The following year, Wolfe exhibited with the London Group.

Wolfe was one of the first British artists to become attracted to and influenced by Matisse and Modigliani, and was known as'England's Matisse', owing to his vibrant use of colour and fluent painterly style.

'Wolfe does more than convey his own delight in the world, notably in still-life; he spells it out slowly and lovingly with such supercharged gusto and excited imagination that a prosaic subject is transformed, as a painting, into an "object de luxe"'.

Bryan Robertson, The Arts Council, Retrospective Exhibition, 1967