Painter and printmaker Wilhem Kuhnert was born Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Kuhnert on September 18, 1865, in Oppeln, Poland. Though he showed an early aptitude for drawing, his family's poor financial situation made formal studies an unlikely possibilty, and he apprenticed as a machinist in his high school years. At age seventeen, however, his uncle arranged for Kuhnert to apprentice as a commercial artist and portraitist in Berlin. This helped him earn a scholarship to enroll in the Berlin University of the Arts (1883-1887), where Kuhnert's fascination with animals led him to take courses from painter Paul Meyerheim, who specialized in capturing the fur, hair, and other physical complexities of animals in oil paint and watercolors.

By now, Kuhnert had his own professional studio in Berlin, and his early commissions included a set of trading cards for the Stollwork chocolate company and technical illustrations for the 1890 edition of the zoological reference book Brehms Tierleben. As recognition of his talent rose and his income grew, Kuhnert began taking frequent trips throughout Egypt, East Africa, and India under the auspices of the German government to study exotic species. The first German artist to travel through much of East Africa and India, he develop his signature style, which involved sketching his subjects only in the wild as opposed to zoos. His talent for capturing the natural behaviors of animals en plain-air piqued the interest of zoologist Johann Wilhelm Haacke, who hired him to illustrate his book Animal Life on Earth (1901). Kuhnert soon developed a reputation as one of the leading German animal painters, a reputation still maintained today.

With the advent of World War I and a second marriage, Kuhnert's safari days were over by the late 1910s. He continued to travel throughout Europe, however, and continued to capture animals in their indigenous elements. It's estimated that Kuhnert produced over 5,500 major works of art, but much of it was lost in the Second World War, making his work fairly scarce.

Kuhnert was in Switzerland on a sketching trip when he fell ill and died in 1926.