Arnold Hoffmann was born in 1866 in Odessa, Russia. He later moved to New York and was a member of the American Watercolor Society.  He exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1921, the National Academy of Design, and the Audubon Artists, and the Montross Gallery.  He worked as a portrait painter, teacher, lecturer, and lithographer in New York, New Jersey, Munich, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa and the University of Palestine.