Carl Gehrts, son of a Hamburg master painter, was the older brother of the painters and illustrators Johannes Gehrts and Franz Gehrts. After attending the Hamburg trade school in the evening, where he was taught by the teacher Friedrich Heimerdinger, among others, he studied with the help of scholarships from 1871 at the Weimar Art Academy under Ferdinand Brütt, Karl Gussow and Albert Baur.

He followed his teacher Baur to Düsseldorf in 1876. There he worked as a history, landscape, portrait and genre painter. He was friends with Emil Zeiß. He had close artistic contact with August Wittig, who taught sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and in later years with the illustrator Heinrich Otto. In the circle of the writer Sophie Hase...