Carl Fahringer was born in Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna, in 1874.

From 1894 to 1898 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Sigmund L’allemand, Christian Griepenkerl and August Eisenmenger. He then moved to Munich for four years to study at the academy there under Carl von Marr, where he began his artistic career and illustrated fairy tales. Works by Wilhelm Hauff and the Brothers Grimm are worth mentioning. He also decorated writings by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Adalbert Stifter.

After completing his studies, study trips took the artist to southern Europe and the Middle East. After his return, Carl Fahringer became a member of the Hagenbund from 1903 to 1905 and of the Vienna Künstlerhaus from 1907.

During the First World War, Fahringer was stationed in Italy and Russia as a war painter; pictures from this period are now in the Museum of Military History in Vienna. Further trips to Holland, Bali, Java and Sumatra followed in 1921 and 1929, where the exotic landscape and wildlife made a deep impression on him and inspired his vibrant work. From 1929 to 1945 he took up a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1938/39 head of the master class), from 1939 head of the specialist class for animal and landscape painting.