Teodor Axentowicz was born on May 13, 1859, in Brasov (Hungary, now Romania), to a family of Polish–Armenian ancestry. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1879-1882. Then he moved to Paris, where he was a student of French painter Carolus-Duran and continued his education until 1895. Meanwhile, he started a long-time cooperation with various journals as an art illustrator and making copies of masters like Titian and Botticelli for magazines.