[1] The realism of Corinth's early works was encouraged by Löfftz's teaching, which emphasized careful observation of colors and values.
[1] He then traveled to Antwerp, where he greatly admired the paintings of Rubens, and then in October 1884 to Paris where he studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian.
He was disappointed, however, in his repeated failure to win a medal at the Salon, and returned to Königsberg in 1888 when he adopted the name "Lovis Corinth".
These nine years in Munich were not his most productive, and he was perhaps better known for his ability to drink large amounts of red wine and champagne.
In 1902 at the age of 43, he opened a school of painting for women and married his first student, Charlotte Berend, some 20 years his junior.
The house where Corinth was born is still in the town of Tapiau, which is now called Gvardeysk, and located in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.
At the end of the Second World War, when the Red Army invaded East Prussia, this painting disappeared without trace.
Tapiau was among the few East Prussian places not devastated by the war, which makes it likely that the painting was looted rather than destroyed.
In 1937, Nazi authorities removed 295 of his works from public collections, and transported seven of them to Munich where they were displayed in March 1937 in the Degenerate Art Exhibition.
[16] In 2007, the German city of Hanover returned a painting by Corinth to the heirs of Jewish collector Curt Glaser, who sold it in 1933 to fund his escape from the Nazis.
The painting from 1914, Römische Campagna [de] (Roman Landscape), was handed to Glaser's heirs, represented by his U.S.-based niece and her daughter.
[17] In 2015 heirs of Holocaust victims Thea and Fritz Goldschmidt made a restitution claim for Covinth's Tyrolean Woman with Cat” (“Tirolerin mit Katze”) after the painting appeared at the Im Kinsky auction house in Vienna on sale from an anonymous owner.
[20] In June 2021, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels agreed to return Corinth's 1913 Blumenstilleben (Still Life with Flowers) to the heir of Gustav and Emma Mayer, who were persecuted by the Nazis and forced to flee because of their Jewish heritage.