Wilhelm Buddenberg is known for his landscape paintings with wild animals: deer, foxes, boars, pheasants. His father, a textile merchant, owned a hunting reserve near Trier and wanted his son to study architecture in Berlin. This study was short-lived: Wilhelm spent every spare minute drawing and painting in the zoo and applied to the art academy. In the first year, he won a prize that allowed him to make an art trip to Rome. Instead of this usual 'grand tour', Buddenberg chose to travel to Norway to study the moose. Without the financial support of his parents, he produced illustrations for books and magazines to support himself. After serving in the First World War, he made study trips to Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary, among others. In the forests he studied and painted the forest landscapes and animals.