Hermann Herzog studied under Schirmer at the Dusseldorf Academy and also took private lessons from Andreas Achenbach and Hans Fredrik Gude. In the following he traveled throughout Europe visiting mainly mountainous regions. Lively and wild mountains landscapes became his main motif, mostly executed in large formats and with dramatic light effects. In 1861 Herzog traveled to North America for the first time, where he eventually settled a few years later. He remained an active artist up into an old age and had his last exhibition together with his son Lewis in New York in 1931. At the age of almost hundred he died in his adopted home Philadelphia in 1932.