Museum Folkwang was founded by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921) in the Westphalian industrial town of Hagen in 1902. From its beginnings as an art collection supplemented by natural history and arts-and-craft pieces, it soon developed into a pioneering modern art museum in Germany. As the first public collection in Germany, Museum Folkwang purchased and exhibited works by trailblazers in Modernism such as Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Matisse. Today Museum Folkwang is one of the most prominent art museums in Germany with outstanding collections of painting and sculpture from the 19th century, Classical Modernism and the post-1945 period, as well as photography, to which Museum Folkwang has dedicated its own department since 1979.