Christian Landenberger was born in Ebingen on the Schwäbischer Alb in 1862. Defying his father, Christian Landenberger wanted to become a painter and trained (1879-1882) at the Royal Art School in Stuttgart under Jacob Grünenwald and Carl von Häberlin. The years 1883-1885 saw Landenberger continuing his studies at the Munich Fine Art Academy, where he presumably also attended the painting class taught by Alexander von Liezen-Mayer. In 1890 Christian Landenberger showed his work for the first time publicly at the Munich Glass Palace exhibition. In 1892 he became a member of the Munich Secession and from then on took part on a regular basis in their exhibitions until 1916. Returning to Württemberg around 1894, Christian Landenberger consolidated his reputation as a plein air painter and founded a summer school for painting at Sigmaringen in 1895. From 1899 until 1905 Christian Landenberger also taught at the Women Artists' Association in Munich. In 1904 Landenberger was appointed to a post along with Adolf Hölzel at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts, which had been the Royal Art School until 1901. Spending the summer months at Dießen on Lake Ammersee from 1903, Christian Landenberger continued to run his painting school there. However, he also used the summer months for traveling, going to Lakes Chiemsee and Constance, in 1911/12 to the Netherlands coast and in 1926 to Florence, Norway and the island of Sylt.
Christian Landenberger began his career as an artist with realistic genre representations in dark tones, following the academic prescription of the day for genre painting. In the early 1890s, however, Christian Landenberger's palette lightened and he turned to painting outdoors in the Impressionist style. A leading German exponent of Impression, Christian Landenberger is credited with establishing plein air painting in Swabia. He produced numerous paintings of "Boys Bathing" at Dießen on Lake Ammersee. Apart from them, Christian Landenberger's œuvre includes the still life, interiors and allegorical and religious painting. From 1919 the artist increasingly addressed himself to the medium of etching, in which he mainly executed figurative and genre-like motifs.
Christian Landenberger died in 1927. Through his teaching at the Stuttgart Academy, Landenberger exerted a paramount influence on numerous 20th-century German exponents of representational painting.