He graduated from Elf Sternberg College in New Windsor, Maryland, in 1864, and from 1866 to 1872 served as a topographer and draughtsman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Fortress Monroe and Baltimore, and in the survey of canal routes over the Alleghanies in Virginia.

He then studied under Wilhelm von Diez at the Royal Academy at Munich where he received a medal in the life class.

[1] He opened a studio in New York City, where he worked at first as an illustrator of books and magazines, and became a distinguished draughtsman and painter of genre pictures.

[2] In 1903, he became professor of drawing at the College of the City of New York and about the same time was made director of the art schools at Cooper Union.

He made major contributions to deluxe editions of works by Longfellow, Hawthorne, George Eliot, and other writers, and to the various publications of the Tile Club, of which he was a member.