A painter and teacher, Edward Potthast Jr. (1880-1941) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and was the nephew of Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927) with whom he studied. He was in Holland from 1904 to 1905 and then returned to live in New York City, where he painted with his uncle, and remained until the 1920s when he moved to Cincinnati. There he taught commercial art at the Ohio Mechanics Institute.

Potthast exhibited with the American Watercolor Society and at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

He died in Cincinnati in 1941.