An artist and dentist, Adalbert Volck was born in Augsburg, Germany and raised in Bavaria. He studied science at the Polytechnic Institute in Nuremburg, while learning drawing and printmaking at a nearby artist's colony. He continued his education in chemistry at the University of Munich and sought additional training in artist's studios in that city. A political reformer involved in the German democratic revolutions of 1848, Volck fled the country for America. He arrived in St. Louis in 1849, then joined the Gold Rush to California. He settled in Baltimore in 1851, and became a chemistry instructor and student at the newly founded College of Dentistry (now the Dental School, University of Maryland). He earned a degree in dental science in 1852, opened his own practice, and was a pioneer in his profession, developing porcelain compounds for fillings and artificial teeth.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Volck became politically active once again, this time in support of the Confederacy. He was a powerful sympathizer and agent, running blockades and providing medicine and information. He exercised his artistic skills as a political cartoonist, publishing scathing anti-Union prints under the pseudonym "V. Blada" (a reversal of the first five letters of his first name, and the first initial of his last name). His Sketches from the Civil War in North America (begun in 1861), consisted of thirty etchings issued in two parts around 1863 to 1864.

In the decades following the war, Volck returned his dental practice, and extended his artistic pursuits to oil painting, sculpture, and metal work in silver, bronze and copper. A prominent member of the cultural community in Baltimore, he helped establish the Wednesday Club, a well-known group of artists, actors, and musicians; the Maryland Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught, and the Charcoal Club.

As a painter, he produced landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Employing a soft, painterly realism, Volck creates a variety of colors, textures, and material contrasts. RS

Sources
Anderson, George McCullough. The Work of Adalbert Johann Volck: 1828-1912. Baltimore: privately printed by the author, 1977.

McKee, Anna Marie. Adalbert J. Volck: An Exhibit of Major Historic Works. Baltimore: Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, Dental School and Health Sciences Library, University of Maryland, 1978.

Biography courtesy of The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/charleston