Painter and printmaker Lovis Corinth was born Franz Heinrich Louis in Tapiau, Kingdom of Prussia (now in Oblast, Russia) on July 21, 1858. Showing an early aptitude for drawing, he was sent to study painting at the Konigsberg Academy at the age of eleven. Among his teachers was Otto Gunther, who encouraged Corinth to change course from becoming an historical painter and travel to the metropolitan city of Munich to continue his studies among leading modern artists. In 1880 Corinth enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich where he studied under Ludwig von Lofftz and discovered the works of Courbet and the Barbizon school artists, which would remain influences throughout his career. 

In 1884 Corinth traveled throughout Europe, first to Antwerp to study the works of Rubens, and then to Paris to study at the Academie Julian. Despite finding the beginnings of critical success, he never medaled at the Salon and, frustrated, he returned once more to Konigsberg in 1888. He then changed his name to Lovis Corinth, and began to explore more avant-garde styles. For the next nine years Corinth participated in the organizations that pushed back againt the staid Munich Artists' Assocation, including the Munich Secession and the Free Association. It was a period of limited output for Corinth, however, though he took time to learn various printmaking techniques and became particularly intrigued by drypoint and lithography. It wasn't until 1900, when he moved to Berlin, that he took up painting and exhibting with renewed vigor. He held a solo exhibition at a gallery owned by German art dealer and supporter of the Secessions, Paul Cassirer. 

In 1902 he opened a painting school for women, marrying his student Charlotte Berend soon thereafter. In addition to his art, Covinth wrote and published several essays on art history and a book on painting techniques, "Erlernen der Malerei (On Learning to Paint" in 1908. He suffered a serious stroke in 1911 that left him with a limp and a tremor in his hands, but, with the help of Charlotte, was painting again within a year. In 1915 he became the president of the Berlin Secession, a position he would hold until his death a decade later. 

In the late 1910s and early '20s Corinth began focusing more and more on printmaking, creating a series of etchings of his family in 1919 and eventually executing the majority of his over 900 graphic works between 1920s and 1924. Among his most well known images of this time are landscapes of Tyrol and the Bavarian Alps, exemplary of the Expressionist and Impressionst leanings of the time. By this time he had established himself as one of Berlin's leading Expressionist painters, with all of the controversy that came with the label. A portrait he made of Georg Brandes was so reviled by the Danish critic that he later owed Corinth's untimely death to its creation. Despite this, Corinth was granted an honorary doctorate from the University of Konigsberg and in 1922 his work was featured at the Venice Biennle.
 
In 1925 Corinth traveled to the Netherlands to study the paintings of the Dutch Masters. While there, he caught pneumonia and died in Zandvoort. 

The work of Lovis Corinth went on to have a life of their own long after his death. A posthumous show of his watercolors was held in his honor the following year at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, as well as a show of his prints and drawings at the Berlin Academy. Many of these works were purchased by the Nationalgalerie by 1930. However, with the rise of the Third Reich his work was among the many deemed degenerate, pilfering nearly 300 Corinth pieces from private and public collections throughout Germany and putting them on display at the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. Many of these works, which had been originally purchased by Jewish collectors, were lost or fell into the hands of families or museums that had not purchased them, including some which are contested by the families of the orginal owners today.