Wachter was a founder of the Brotherhood of St. Luke, a society of those painters who soon after established at Rome a more natural and thoughtful school of painting, known as the Nazarenes. Wachter finally went to Stuttgart, where he painted "Cimon in Prison", "Ulysses and the Sirens", the "Boat of Life", "Andromache standing at the Urn with Hector's Ashes", the "Greek Muse mourning over the Ruins of Athens", a "Virgin with St. John Sorrowing at the Grave of Christ", etc. He excelled in treating lyrical and elegiac subjects.