Painter and sculptor Alfred Adrian Wolfe (Alfred Abraham Woolfstein) was born into a Jewish family in London in 1891. Information about his life and career is patchy but his humorous cartoon (Ben Uri Collection) shows that he was a committee member of the Arts Section of the Jewish Association of Arts and Sciences (J.A.A.S.), alongside Alfred Wolmark, in London in 1917. Wolfe was also a member, alongside his wife, Anna, of the Ethical Society in London (Anna sat on its Fine Arts Committee and performed at Conway Hall with her string quartet in the 1920s). Possibly through Anna, Wolfe was friendly with the Suffragette campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst and, according to his obituary, painted the banner used at her meetings. By 1944 – the year in which he officially changed his name to its Anglicised form – he was living in Cambridge. In 1969, a retrospective of his drawings and watercolours, including The Old Philosopher (now Ben Uri Collection) was held at Leighton House in London. Inspired by William Morris' socialist ideas, Wolfe also created a posthumous portrait plaque of Morris, which he donated in 1969 to Essex University’s Morris Tower on the main campus. He spent his final years in Clacton in Essex, where he died after a long illness in 1975.