[2] Eytel's most important work, Desert Near Palm Springs, hangs in the History Room of the California State Library.

[2] Eytel was well educated in the German gymnasium and became enamored of the American West while reading the works of Prussian natural science writer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, which he found in the Stuttgart Royal Library.

[7]: xxxviii  In 1891, he read an article about the Palm Springs area in the San Francisco Call and was "incited" to visit the California desert.

[21] Besides his work in Wonders of the Colorado Desert and Cone-bearing Trees, Eytel contributed (both drawings and articles) to the best periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times [22] and, for nearly 14 years, the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.

[6]) A stone wall in the dining room of Dr. Welwood Murray's early hotel was covered with an Eytel mural of Palm Canyon.

[28] Along with naturalist Edmund C. Jaeger, and authors Chase and Charles Francis Saunders,[29] Eytel was a core member of what University of Arizona Professor Peter Wild called a "Creative Brotherhood"[5] that lived in Palm Springs in the early 20th century.

Other Brotherhood members included cartoonist and painter Swinnerton,[30] author James, and photographers Fred Payne Clatworthy and Stephen H.

[31][32]: 106–113  The men lived near each other (like Eytel, Jaeger built his own cabin), traveled together throughout the Southwest, helped with each other's works, and exchanged photographs which appeared in their various books.

The Brotherhood lasted from 1915 when Jaeger, who was the teacher in the Palm Springs one-room school house, met Eytel and Chase.

[36] Even after Jaeger left to complete his studies and Chase married the wealthy Isabel White (1917), the three, plus Saunders, often exchanged letters.

[34]: 126–131, 153–158 [37] Suffering from a "hacking and persistent cough",[38] Eytel remained in Palm Springs, impoverished, and Swinnerton would buy art supplies for him.

[7]: 41 [39] The school has origins with Alson S. Clark and Jack Frost, who were influenced by French impressionist Claude Monet.

Other Smoketree artists include Carl Bray, Fred Chisnall, Maynard Dixon, Clyde Forsythe, Sam Hyde Harris, John Hilton, R. Brownell McGrew, Agnes Pelton, Hanson Puthuff and Swinnerton.

[12][23][24]: 100–101  His funeral and burial were arranged by Nellie Coffman, who had established the original Desert Inn in the Palm Springs village in 1909.