His father, Karl Eduard von Liphart, came from a noble Baltic German family that was based at Raadi Manor in what is now Estonia.

His father continued his interest in art, which was financed and supported by Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, the daughter of Tsar Nicholas I.

[2] Liphart also took on more unusual requests, including the menu for the Tsar's coronation in 1896 and then painting 100 figures on a piano, telling the story of Orpheus.

[3] Liphart's home was still in Russia, where he taught at the Drawing School of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Saint Petersburg in the 1890s, where his students included Eugene Lanceray.

Liphart arranged for the museum to purchase Madonna and Child with Flowers,[2] which he had correctly attributed to da Vinci, from the Benois family.

The university's art museum still has the collection, which includes examples of Japanese woodcuts as well as noted prints by Albrecht Dürer and William Hogarth.