Came to Rome late 1863 where he worked under the direction of Karl Lindemann-Frommel. 1873 & 1878 in Rome again, however, 1881 he had to leave the city following an altercation.

“ In the years of study and shortly afterwards Graf drew heads, animal studies, robed figures, nudes, figurative compositions … did travel sketches with landscapes, town views, architectural motifs, and genre scenes … Later ‘his artistic course (led him) from the brown manner of the Munich studio via the classicism of the Deutsch-Römer to a naturalism (after 1870) trained at Courbet, from which he, consequently and apart from the great world,

developed  himself  independently  to  an  impressionist ’ ”

(Piotr Łukaszewicz in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon LX [2008], quoting from W. Born, Schlesische Monatshefte 2 [1925], 521 s.).