While there, he continued to make drawing expeditions into the countryside and made the acquaintance of Robert Wilhelm Ekman, who encouraged him to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

[3] In 1858, he received a recommendation to study with Thomas Couture in Paris, but was overwhelmed by the huge cosmopolitan city and left to enroll at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf instead.

In 1868, he returned to Finland to take a position at the University of Helsinki drawing school; replacing the late Magnus von Wright.

Among his best-known students were Albert Edelfelt, Helene Schjerfbeck, Elin Danielson-Gambogi, Helena Westermarck and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

This came to a head at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, when the older generation, represented by Becker, Walter Runeberg and Berndt Lindholm, came into open confrontation with a younger faction led by Ville Vallgren and Albert Edelfelt.