Eduard Manhart was born in Klagenfurt in 1880.

After school he moved to Vienna, where he attended the School of Applied Arts from 1898 to 1900, then the Master School for Landscape Painting with Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels for two years.

1904-1906 Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (student of Ludwig Willroider), then return to Carinthia, where he gradually established himself as a landscape painter. This is followed by membership in the Kunstverein für Carinthia and several exhibitions in the country. War painter on the southwest front 1916-1918, then participation in the Carinthian defensive struggle.

In the 1920s several postcard series, the artistic design of klagenfurt station and other commissions. Because of the stylistic similarities with his greatest role model, he receives the honorary title “Kärntner Compton”.

In the 1930s, further series of postcards and purchases by public institutions followed. He returned to war as a war painter during World War II. Shortly after the end of the war, Eduard Manhart was kidnapped by the partisans and died, probably in May 1945, in an internment camp in Slovenia.

His numerous views of Carinthian places are an important and artistically valuable contribution to the topographical survey of the country.