Born in Oberhausen, Bavaria, Germany in 1864, Ferdinand Kaufmann immigrated to the United States with his family in the early 1880s. He settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he would live for the next four decades. He returned to Europe in 1896, studying in Paris at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens, Benjamin Constant and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Following his studies and travels through Europe, he returned to Philadelphia in 1902 where he was a member of the Pittsburgh Art Association.

In 1921, Kaufmann moved to Southern California, settling in Pasadena in 1934. He exhibited with the Pasadena Art Institute and became a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1939. Kaufman traveled throughout the United States and is known for his impressionist landscape paintings of California, Colorado, and Arizona as well as his marine paintings of California and Gloucester, Massachusetts.