Otto Jacobi RCA was born in Königsberg, Western Prussia in 1812.  Jacobi received his first art lessons in his native city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). In 1830, he studied in Berlin (Königliche Akademie der Kunste). He then moved on to the Fine Arts Academy in Düsseldorf, where he studied under the painter Johann Wilkem Schirmer. Between 1840 and 1860, he worked in the court of a German prince in Wiesbaden (now Hesse). Jacobi emigrated to America around 1860. He settled in Montreal, where he forged ties with the local artistic milieu and with artists from abroad such as his fellow countrymen Adolph Vogt (1812-1871). Jacobi was a landscape painter who worked around Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa and Kingston, and who mainly painted waterfalls. He briefly taught at the Ontario College of Art. He showed his works in the annual exhibitions of the Art Association of Montreal and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1880-1898), of which he would become president in 1890. He returned to live with his brother in Ardoch, Dakota, where he died in 1901.