Lady Teazle (after Robert Vonnoh)

Henry Wolf

Lady Teazle is a character in the Richard Brinsley Sheridan play ridiculing pretentiousness, 'The School for Scandal', first performed in 1777. Lady Teazle was a spendthrift, married to an elderly man and the play focuses on this relationship. She was noted for her elaborate wardrobe, which Henry Wolf captures, almost photographically, with the woodengraved line.

Julia Marlowe was a renowned American actress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her portrait was painted by the artist Robert Vonnoh in 1905 and used by Henry Wolf to create this work, which could be printed in multiples, giving ordinary people access to the image. This was all changing as photography came into its own in the early 20th century.

In 1915, the year before his death, the American wood engraver Henry Wolf won the Grand Prize for his printmaking at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. The Wolf prints we have were available for sale at the PPIE and many were the actual prints exhibited and have the label from the PPIE.