German painter Rudolf Otto was born in Groß-Schönau in Bohemia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary at that time. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts after completing training as a stonemason. He painted mostly landscapes and still lifes, some of which are now in museums in Dresden and Leipzig. He then turned to motifs of his native Saxony, particularly from Dresden and Saxon Switzerland, but also created genre scenes. Otto was known for frequently re-copying his own paintings. Beginning in 1913, he worked as a freelance artist in Loschwitz, a spa town incorporated into Dresden in 1921.
Germany