Born in San Francisco, Edward Cucuel was an Impressionist painter of genre and figures in landscapes. He often used his family members for models rather than professionals.

At the age of fourteen, he enrolled at the School of Design in San Francisco and three years later moved to Paris to further his studies. In 1896, he returned to the United States and worked to earn enough money to return to Germany and Paris, which he did in the next few years.

He married Clara Lotte von Marcard in 1913 and they spent their summers in a villa on Lake Ammersee in Holzhausen near Munich. In 1928, they moved to New York, but traveled extensively. In 1939, Cucuel settled permanently in California.

Edward Alfred Cucuel died in Pasadena in 1954.