After an early training with her father, Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803-1889), Emilie painted her first still life in 1867. She worked in the same meticulous technique, perhaps slightly less accomplished, as that of her father. For study purposes, she visited museums in Dresden, Antwerp, and the Netherlands. Her oeuvre consists mainly of still lifes of fruit, apart from several early floral still lifes, and numbers about two hundred fifty paintings, many of which have found homes in the United States.
