The son of a button and braid-maker, Piepenhagen taught himsef to paint from the age of twelve. He later travelled around Europe as a journeyman, and while in Switzerland, he made the acquaintance of the painter Johann Heinrich Wüest, who was probably his only teacher. He arrived in Prague in 1810 and was employed by the buttonmaker Jan Rissbitter. After his master’s death he married his widow and took over the workshop. He started to devote himself to painting in the 1820s, initially landscapes based on etchings, but subsequently his own free creation also. He first exhibited his landscapes in 1822 and in 1829 he created the title picture for Karl Egon Ebert’s poem Vlasta. Although was sought-after as a braid-maker there was great interest in his romantically and emotionally-coloured landscapes with atmospheric transformations, such as his Moonlit Landscape or Mountain Landscape (1864), which became to a degree typical of his oeuvre. Evidence of that interest was a series of exhibitions, such as in Berlin (1842), Munich (1856) and particularly Vienna, where he exhibited on several occasions between the years 1842 and 1868. During the period 1853−1866 he undertook study trips to Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland, which became a source of inspiration for him.