Having started life as a painter of clock-faces, he entered in 1859 the Karlsruhe academy, where he studied under Schirmer and Des Coudres.
He subsequently studied and worked, with but indifferent success, in Düsseldorf, Paris, Italy, Munich and Frankfurt, until his reputation became firmly established as the result of an exhibition of some thirty of his paintings in Munich.
As one of the most important and successful exponents of German realism, he painted portraits with solid compositional structures and airy landscapes; later he also dealt with sacred and mythological subjects with subtle symbolic intent.
From 1899 he taught at the academy in Karlsruhe and headed the Staatliche Kunsthalle, which has housed a department dedicated to him since 1909.
He died in Karlsruhe in 1924 at the age of 85