Joseph Hoffmann had his first drawing lessons at a young age. When he was eighteen he travelled with a friend of his father to Austria, Croatia and Serbia. On his return to Vienna in 1852, he joined the atelier of Carl Rahluntil.

In 1856 he travelled to Venice via Munich and Tyrol. The following year he travelled around Greece and then visited Rome, where he stayed for the next six years. This was the time when Hoffman conceived the ‘Ideal’ of the Greek landscape in paintings like: The remains of the sanctuary of Venus on the road to Eleysis, The Old Periclean Athens, Seen from the Gardens of the Queen and The Grave of Anacreo.

In 1864 Hoffmann returned to Vienna. From 1869 onwards, he worked on stage sets for the New Vienna Court Opera, such as Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Weber’s The Marksman and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 

Later in his career Hoffmann painted numerous landscape murals for the Palais Epstein in Vienna, the Castle Hernstein, the Kursalon in Vienna’s city park, the Parliament building, the Natural History Museum in Vienna and five paintings of ancient Athens for Baron Sina.