Regionalist painter and printmaker Robert Franz von Neumann was born in Rostock, Germany. He studed at the Royal Academy in Berlin; with Franz Bunke in Weimar; and at the Crafts Museum in Berlin with Emil Doepler. He emigrated to the United States in 1926 and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He taught at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1930, von Neumann began teaching at Milwaukee State Teachers' College (now the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee), a post that he had held for twenty-nine years at the time of his retirement. Von Neumann was an active painter and printmaker throughout his life; his work included portraits, landscapes, and maritime subjects, all rendered with honesty and sympathy for the everyday people whom he so often portrayed. He died at Milwaukee.