Carl Rudolph Krafft was born in 1884 in Reading, Ohio, and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1900s. Early in his career, he studied for the ministry but decided to enter the commercial art field. Krafft studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Chicago Fine Arts Academy.

In 1912, Krafft and painter Rudolph Ingerle traveled to the Ozark Mountains in south-central Missouri to find subjects for paintings. In 1913, they founded an artists’ society there, the Ozark Society of Painters. The landscapes and hazy atmosphere of the Ozarks are what drew Krafft and his fellow artists. Krafft painted in the Ozarks for more than two decades, and the area that Krafft depicted was near the town of Arcadia and along the Gasconade River.

The first painting that brought Krafft attention was The Charms of the Ozarks, which was awarded a $500 prize in the 1916 Art Institute annual exhibition for Chicago artists.

Krafft was also a member of the Palette and Chisel Club, Municipal Art League (founder), the Society of Painters of the Forest Preserve (founder), Society of Ozark Painters (founder and president in 1915), and Art League of Oak Park, of which he was founder and president from 1921 to 1922.

Later in his career, Krafft began showing his work outside the Midwest, in places such as New York, between 1912 and 1938.

Krafft died in 1938 in Oak Park, Illinois.