He was born to Martin Tobias Andreas Kehrer (1717-1790), a local land commissioner, and his wife Elisabeth Sophia née Luck (1730-1806). He received his first professional lessons from
Anton Wilhelm Tischbein in
Hanau, where he studied for four years. In 1777, he went to
Erbach im Odenwald, where he worked as a portrait painter and made sketches along the
Rhine. After a brief stay in
Hanover, he found employment at the Court of the
Anhalt-Bernburg family in
Ballenstedt in 1782. From 1785 to 1787, he was allowed to attend the
Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he worked with
Giovanni Battista Casanova then, after a visit to Leipzig, he returned to Ballenstedt. The training he received in Dresden and the contacts he made there were crucial for his career. His skills finally took him to Berlin in 1790, where he stayed until 1792. The following year, he was admitted to the
Prussian Academy of Arts as a member of the "Fine Arts Section". After 1815, he was also a member of the "Electoral Hessian Drawing Academy", forerunner to the present . In addition to portraits, which remain his best known works, he executed landscapes and
genre scenes. He also painted scenes from works of poetry, including three from ''The Artist's Pilgrimage'' by
Goethe, and historical representations, from contemporary events and the
Thirty Years War. His younger brother was the
court painter and
archivist,
Christian Wilhelm Karl Kehrer. == Sources ==