Wolf came of a family of agriculturists. Bred amid field, woodland and hedgerow, he gathered his love of all things beautiful, animate and inanimate, direct from Nature. From his earliest boyhood he had an intense love of birds, and so strong was his feeling in that direction that he never lost a chance of dissecting and thoroughly making himself master of the anatomy of the specimen under his immediate observation. In maturer life it was not enough for him to give a surface resemblance to a bird; he was one of the earnest men who must go deep down to the very root of his subject. Whatever eminence he gained as an all-round naturalist, it is by his bird pictures that he will always stand out the more prominent.
As a book illustrator he became so popular that no collection of varied art seemed complete without one or more of his exquisitely graceful pictures.
He was a great lover of music, and would often dream away the idle hours, as he called them, on his favourite instrument, the zither; and a propos, surely there was much sweet and even grand music in his groups of birds, such as "The rooks sat high" and "The mother kite watching and guarding her nest."
In our long connection with the firm of Thomas Nelson & Sons, of Edinburgh, we made a large number of drawings and did much engraving for their books. The work was mostly of an instructive and amusing kind for young people. Among the various artists employed upon their publications, Keeley Halswell, who at that time resided in Edinburgh, did a great many drawings. The Messrs. Nelson had an art department in connection with their vast establishment. In this branch William Small was a pupil; and there he illustrated many of their story books before he came to London to take a first place amongst the most distinguished artists in black and white. Small became an important contributor to the Graphic in its early days, and made many drawings for Good Words and other magazines of Strahan's. He also made a few clever drawings for Buchanan's "North Coast Poems."
"The careless words had scarcely
Time from his lips to fall,
When the Lady of Castle Windeck
Came round the ivy wall.
"He saw the glorious maiden
In her snow-white drapery stand,
A bunch of keys at her girdle,
The beaker high in her hand."
"The Lady of Castle Windeck."—W. Cullen Bryant.