Hans Heinrich Bebie was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and immigrated to America in the early 1840s. He went first to Richmond and then Wheeling in the western part of Virginia, but he had settled in Baltimore, Maryland, by the mid-1840s and spent most of his career in that city. Although Bebie probably received no formal training in art, he exhibited in Europe and in 1849 showed three paintings at the second annual exhibition of the Maryland Historical Society Second In American Paintings 1750-1900 from the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Sona K. Johnston (1983) states that "Bebie was one of the most sought-after portrait painters in the city, his canvases depicting in careful detail the fashionable dress and accessories of his subjects."