Although he is considered a Canadian artist, Cornelius David Krieghoff was born on 19 June 1815 in Amsterdam, son of a German expatriate father and Belgian mother. In the early 1830's, he probably studied art at the Düsseldorf Academy which had a strong genre tradition. In 1836, he emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the American army, fighting against the Seminole Indians of Florida.

In New York, he met a young French-Canadian woman, Émile Gautier, whom he married. In 1840, he was discharged - rumors persist that he deserted - went on a trip to Paris in 1844 to copy paintings in the Louvre and settled in Longueuil, then Montreal in 1847 or 1848. There are many anecdotes about Krieghoff, a little man who habitually wore a velvet suit and beaver hat, described as good hunter and musician, playing the fiddle, flute, guitar, and piano.

His early subjects were reactions to the local scenery, and in many of these works he posed his wife and young daughter in the scene. At the time, Krieghoff was ready to paint virtually any subject, including scenes of Indian life, portraits, and landscapes, and peddled his paintings door-to-door for $5 to $10 each.

During one of his trips to Quebec in the late 40's and 50's, he met the Quebec bon vivant and merchant John Budden, who urged him to move to Quebec and focus on genre subjects.

Krieghoff acceded and became the first painter in Quebec to specialize in genre painting, which became extremely popular. His landscapes follow the European picturesque topographic strain, often showing small people pointing at and setting for the same scenic wonder. Both genre scenes and landscapes are problematic in that they fail to address the Canadian reality, looking essentially European. The other problem that persists is political: the paintings of habitants frolicking or ill-behaving in some manner found exclusively English buyers and are to this day often felt to be degrading to the French viewer.

Krieghoff's piece de resistance are the various versions of Merry making, a veritable tour de force of genre painting, firmly entrenched in the tradition established by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the 16th century. In the late 1860's, Krieghoff went to Europe, continuing to paint Canadian subjects there. He may have been in Chicago, returning to Quebec in 1870. He died in March 1878 in Chicago.