[4] After receiving a traditional elementary and secondary education in French schools, Hoffbauer attended the École des Beaux-Arts for three years.

In 1898 his painting Reunion de bourgeois aux XIVe siècle earned an honorable mention at his first exhibition at the Paris Salon.

At the 1902 Paris Salon his painting Revolte des Flamandes earned the Prix Rosa Bonheur and was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

[5] At the 1905 Paris Salon, Hoffbauer entered his painting Sur les toits, which depicts several well-dressed diners at an upscale New York City rooftop restaurant.

Based on his memory of the photographs, he imagined what a rooftop dining scene would look like and painted a preliminary study after returning to Paris in 1904, using his friends and fellow artists Raoul du Gardier and Rudulph Evans as models.

Over the next few years, Hoffbauer visited Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Milan, Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Athens, Rome, Venice, and the United States.

He also continued to enter paintings in the Paris Salon, including A Londres, which depicts a couple in evening attire preparing to leave a stylish restaurant.

His friend and fellow artist Charles Dana Gibson met him as he arrived and helped establish Hoffbauer in the New York art community.

Knoedler became Hoffbauer's U.S. representative and held numerous exhibitions of the artist's work, including a 1912 repainting of Triomphe d'un Condottiere.

Finn, a painter himself, was searching for an artist for a large project on behalf of Thomas Fortune Ryan and James Taylor Ellyson.

In 1912, the Association had nearly completed its headquarters building, the Confederate Memorial Institute (popularly known as Battle Abbey[note 1]), in Richmond, Virginia.

[13] On July 27, 1912, Ellyson and Hoffbauer signed a four-page contract requiring the artist to "... provide all material and perform all work for the Mural decorations of the four walls of the south wing of the Confederate Memorial Institute."

He used thousands of Mathew Brady photographs as a means of visualizing scenes from over a decade before his birth, and ready access to Civil War veterans next door at the R.E.

He also prepared over a dozen three-dimensional clay models, which allowed him to test perspectives and the arrangement of characters and equipment in order to determine the optimal staging of scenes.

Everywhere tanks and airplanes battered down and out of order, dead horses and men and guns and ammunition spread over the fields, an awful sight.

In May 1921, he received a commission to paint a mural at the recently completed Missouri State Capitol (the prior building was destroyed by fire in 1911).

[26][27] Hoffbauer's link to obtaining the mural commission may have been Evarts Tracy, who was the commander of the American Camouflage Corps and one of the architects of the Missouri capitol.

After viewing the movie, it occurred to him that his artistic ability would be a good match for the animation field and that motion pictures could provide an excellent venue for conveying history.

With the idea of making an historical animated movie, over the next two years Hoffbauer researched Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia and drew thousands of sketches.

In April 1938, Hoffbauer returned to the United States to repair some damage to the Confederate murals and to accept an honorary doctor of fine arts degree awarded by the University of Richmond.

[31] Hoping to further interest in a motion picture based on the paintings, Hoffbauer exhibited the temperas at the Los Angeles Museum and stated, "We artists must ... use this great contemporary medium [animation].

"[32] Despite contacts with several motion picture personnel, including actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and producer Walter Wanger, Hoffbauer was unable to generate interest in the material as a movie.

Even though Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Richmond News Leader, encouraged and endorsed the project, the foundation showed no interest.

[31] Hoffbauer worked on The Life and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, which combined animation and live action, a technique pioneered by Disney.

His work garnered positive comments, with one reviewer stating, "This artist, who so loves history, has managed to present it, not as a series of theatrical events, but as something alive and breathing today.

Reviving the possibility of a production of War and Peace, Hoffbauer contacted director Fred Zinneman about working on an upcoming Mike Todd film based on the novel.

To Hoffbauer's disappointment, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis acquired the rights to the story and made the movie without the artist's assistance.