As a 17 year old, he left his native Bavaria and land in the United States in 1848. After five years living in Ohio, he moved to St. Louis and worked as a painter at the old Pine Street Theater. From St. Louis, he moved south, living for a time in Mobile and New Orleans. At age 41, he moved to Chicago in 1872 and worked as a scenery painter at Hooley's Theater. Three years later, for health reasons, he left the winters of the midwest and moved to San Francisco.
He plied his established trade breifly, painting scenery at the Bush Street Theater and the Grand Opera House. In 1876 though, he dedicated himself to easel painting. He opened a Montgomery Street studio, and made sketching trips into Yosemite, Marin County, the Monterey Penninsula, and up to Oregon. He published some of these scenes as magazine illustrations. His paintings include still lifes, California missions, figure studies and landscapes of Northern California. He died in San Francisco in 1905.
Source: Artists in California 1786 - 1940, Edan Milton Hughes, 3d ed.
