Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk (American, 1856-1935). Oil on canvas painting depicting a portrait of a woman. Signed along the lower left. At the age of four Douglas entertained US President Abraham Lincoln while he posed for a bust for his father, sculptor Leonard Wells Volk.

Later in life, he would paint numerous posthumous portraits of the president based on a life-mask his father made during that sitting. Though Volk spent his early years in Chicago, he would ultimately grow up in Europe where his family moved at the age of fourteen. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Pairs between 1873-1879 where he was a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerome. At the age of nineteen, in 1875, he exhibited at the Paris Salon. Upon returning to the United States, he would go on to help found the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (later renamed to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design – MCAD) and served as its director until 1893. He taught at several prestigious art institutions throughout his life and exhibited at several world’s fair exhibitions such as the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, and the Louisiana Purchase exposition.

One large work of his is displayed in the Governor’s Reception Room at the Minnesota State Capitol. His wife, Marion Larrabee Volk, was a prolific weaver and would become the first instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. Douglas Volk’s students included Russell Cowles, Benjamin Orso Eggleston, Susan Ricker Knox, Ada Murphy, Ella Bennett Sherman, Adele Rogers Shrenk, and Helen Maria Turner. His works can be found in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Montclair Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Muskegon Museum of Art.

Sight; height: 16 in x width: 15 in.
Framed; height: 29 1/2 in x width: 28 in.