[1] During a visit to Rome in 1868, nineteen-year-old de Forest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905).

During these formative years, de Forest counted among his friends artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932).

He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872 and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa.

In 1879, de Forest became a partner of the design firm Associated Artists, with Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933), Samuel Colman (1832–1920), and Candace Wheeler (1827–1923) where he directed the production of architectural woodwork.

Associated Artists lasted only four years, however the firm was one of the most influential decorating companies in the 19th century, and at the forefront of the American Aesthetic Movement emphasizing hand work, intricate color and texture, and tasteful but exotic design themes.

During what became a two-year trip, de Forest collected furniture, jewelry and textiles as he and his wife traveled through Bombay (Mumbai), Surat, Baroda (Vadodara), Ahmadabad, Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, and Srinagar.

De Forest created hundreds of oil sketches of Californian sites, and also traveled around the Pacific Northwest (1903), Maine (1905 and 1908), the Grand Canyon (1906 and 1909), Mexico (1904, 1906–7 and 1911), Massachusetts (1910) and Alaska (1912).

In 1879, while visiting India for the first time, he collaborated with Mugganbhai Hutheesing to start the Ahmedabad Woodcarving Company, which produced elaborately carved furniture, tracery panels, jewelry, and textiles.

[6] Surviving examples of the carved teakwood furniture from the Ahmedabad Woodcarving Company include: Lockwood de Forest imported a part (gudha-mandapa) of a 1596 Jain temple at Patan, Gujarat and donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art[13] in 1916.