Painter, illustrator, designer, and wood engraver, Hans Alexander Mueller was born in Nordhausen, Germany in 1888. He studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where he later taught. (Lynd Ward studied under Mueller there in 1927). In the late 1930s, he emigrated to the United States and settled in Scarsdale, New York, where he worked as a freelance book illustrator and artist. His classic book, Woodcuts and Wood Engravings: How I Make Them was published in 1939. Mueller died at New Milford, Connecticut.