Soren Emil Carlsen was born in Copenhagen on October 19, 1853.
He studied architecture at the Danish Royal Academy between 1868 and 1872. He emigrated to America in 1872, settled in Chicago, and found work as an assistant to a local architect. Born Soren Emil Carlsen in Copenhagen around , Carlsen first began his studies at the Royal Danish Academy as a teenager.For a time he also worked for a fellow Dane, the painter Lauritis Bernhard Holst (1848-1934). When Holst returned to Denmark in 1874, he turned his studio over to Carlsen, who had by this time decided to become a full-time painter.
Upon the recommendation of the Chicago sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895), Carlsen was appointed the first instructor at the newly formed school of the Art Institute.
In 1875 Carlsen returned briefly to Denmark and then went to Paris, where he stayed for six months. While there, he carefully studied the works of the eighteenth-century painter Jean Simeon Chardin (1699-1779).
Returning to New York in 1875, the artist set up his own studio, but he had to supp
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