Heinrich Wolff (1875-1940) was one of the most famous graphic artists in East Prussia, a teacher at the Koenigsberg Academy of Arts and a favorite of the European public. The etchings created by him were highly appreciated for their expressiveness and technical skill, in which Wolff was almost unrivaled. To a great extent, it was him who made portrait drawings popular again. Over his life, the artist made more than a hundred portraits and managed to rouse interest in graphic art in many of his students.

German poetess Agnes Miguel once wrote that Wolff had managed to create a gallery of images of the bourgeois society that had existed before the Second World War. Among his models were artists, writers, doctors and teachers of the Koenigsberg Academy, that is, the people who influenced the life of the city.

Wolff studied at the Berlin Academy of Arts, and then in Munich, where his teacher was Peter Halm, a famous German engraver and admirer of Rembrandt. The great Dutchman became the artist’s guru for many years. Wolff worked in different genres and drew portraits, landscapes, genre scenes. Life circumstances also contributed to his fascination with graphics: the artist suffered from color blindness, so the coloristic possibilities of painting were not available to him.

The Portrait of a Girl presented in the collection of the Kaliningrad Museum is one of Wolff’s earlier works. During that period, the artist was fond of impressionism. As any impressionist, he tried to convey a fleeting impression in this work. Hence the effect of flickering light that is enveloping the model. Another important expressive tool for the artist was the slightly hatched background. The hatching sets off the deep tones in the girl’s hairdo. The thin lines convey contrasts of light and shade, thus making the hair look almost tangible.

For this work, Wolff used the technique of etching. The artist loved it for its rich expressive capabilities, allowing to create a three-dimensional image using chiaroscuro. It was the play of light and shadow that helped Wolff to make the image of the girl very natural and vibrant.