Catharine Lorillard Wolfe was an American philanthropist, art collector and art patron. She gained prominence as a woman, who gave large donations to religious and secular institutions, such as Grace Episcopal Church, Union College and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Background
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe was born on March 8, 1828, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. She was a daughter of John David Wolfe and Dorothea Ann (Lorillard) Wolfe. John David Wolfe was a New York merchant and real estate developer, who was also president and a founder of the American Museum of Natural History, while Dorothea Ann (Lorillard) Wolfe was a partial inheritor of the Lorillard tobacco fortune.
Catharine had a sister, named Mary Lorillard Wolfe, and a brother, David Lorillard Wolfe, who died young.
Catharine's paternal grandfather, David Wolfe, was an officer during the American Revolution in the Paymaster's department. Her maternal grandfather was Pierre Lorillard II, an American tobacco manufacturer, industrialist, banker, businessman and real estate tycoon.
Education
Catharine was reared in a well-off family. As she grew older, she took part in some of her father's philanthropic activities, chiefly under church auspices.
Career
Early in her lifetime, Catharine became a leader in New York society and enjoyed the advantages of travel. When she reached middle age, the death of her father made her heiress of both the Wolfe and the Lorillard millions, and it was then estimated, that she was the richest unmarried woman in the world, although it is doubtful whether her entire estate ever greatly exceeded $12,000,000.
Continuing her father's gifts to various causes and adding projects of her own, Wolfe dispensed at first $100,000 a year, but later more, than doubled that average. In fifteen years, from 1872 till 1887, she gave away more than $4,000,000. For the building of schools and churches, especially in the West and South and in some instances in foreign lands, Catharine gave hundreds of thousands of dollars. Grace Church in New York received from her large building funds, besides an endowment of $350,000, and for the diocese of New York, she provided a central building. St. Luke's Hospital, the Italian mission in Mulberry Street and the newsboys' lodging-house at East Broadway and Gouverneur Street were also among the recipients of her bounty.
Catharine's gifts for secular objects, less numerous, than those for religion, were significant as well. Her contribution to the Union College endowment of $50,000 and her outfitting of the Babylonian archaeological expedition of 1884 under Dr. William Hayes Ward both indicated a broadening of interest. Catharine also provided $10,000, half the funding for the creation of Bishop Whitaker's School for Girls in Reno, Nevada, on the condition, that Episcopal Bishop Ozi William Whitaker raises the other half from other sources. The school was founded in 1876 and operated until 1894.
About 1873, Wolfe had commissioned a cousin, John Wolfe, who was an art connoisseur, to collect a gallery of paintings for her Madison Avenue house in New York. This collection, one of the most noteworthy in America, was many years in forming. It consisted chiefly of the works of nineteenth-century European artists and comprised a hundred and twenty oils and twenty-two watercolors. In 1887, it was valued at $500,000. In her will, Catharine bequeathed the entire collection, with an endowment of $200,000, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A contemporary art critic characterized this gift as "probably the largest bequest ever made to art by a woman".
Catharine passed away in her New York home, leaving no relatives nearer, than cousins.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Catharine died of Bright's disease.