Ivo Hauptmann, son of the poet Gerhart Hauptmann, studied briefly in Paris at the “Académie Julian” in 1903. Although he only stayed in Paris for a short time, his stay had a lasting influence on Hauptmann, not least through his acquaintance with some of the most important artists of the French avant-garde: Maillol, Vuillard, Bonnard and Maurice Denis. Hauptmann returned to Germany in 1904 and became a student of Lovis Corinth in Berlin. In 1913, he moved to Hamburg, became a co-founder of the “Hamburg Secession” and settled permanently in the Hanseatic city.