A young musician by the window: Scholderer chose a German Romanticist motif to reflect on his own artistic stance. After beginnings at the Städel School, he received his formative training in Paris, spending two years in the circle of Courbet and Fantin-Latour from 1857 on. Back in Frankfurt, Scholderer was unable to find an audience for his impasto still lifes and genre scenes. Isolated, he fought for the adoption of plein-air painting and yearned to return to France. He remained a border crosser all his life, too old-fashioned for Paris and too modern for Frankfurt.