He remained faithful to the precepts and principles of the Munich School, while paying greatest attention both to ethnographic themes and portraiture.

His most famous portrait was of the royal couple, Otto and Amalia, and his most well-known landscape a depiction of the region of Lavrio.

In 1860 with a Greek government's scholarship he went to Munich to study in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts where after some time, he succeeded in being accepted into the classes of Karl von Piloty.

[1] In 1862 after King Otto was exiled the scholarship was no longer available to Lytra so the expenses were undertaken by the ambassador of Greece in Vienna Simon Sinas.

[3] For four years, starting in 1873, he travelled to Smyrna and Asia Minor, Munich and Egypt with Gyzis during which he produced a number of Orientalist works.

In later life he founded the 'Art Group', which many years later in 1919 exhibited in Paris, with participants including the engraver Demetrios Galanis, a friend of Derain, Braque and Picasso and a member of the French Academy.

Nikiforos Lytras died at the age of 72 in 1904, after a short illness that is believed to have been caused by his colours' chemical substances.