Cramer, at the age of twenty-three, emigrated with his wife, Florence Ballin (a renowned Woodstock artist) from Germany and came to Woodstock in 1911. Cramer's works from the teens approached the tennants set by Wassily Kandinsky, who relied on the use of color and juxtaposed diagonals to acheive compositional strength. However, during this period Dasburg's and McFee's fascination with Cezanne and cubism played a more influential role in Cramer's art. As a result, these three artists represent some of the earliest investigations into modernism in Woodstock and America.

During the 1920's and 30's, Cramer's style focused on combining objective representation and European modernism. This style mainly found expression in landscapes and still lifes such as Zinnias #3, Executed in 1928, this work poignantly illustrates Cramer's approach to combining cubism as seen in the fragmentation of the background space and realism portrayed in the floral still life. In addition, Cramer's palette used in the present work, unlike the monochromatic paintings of European cubists, incorporates realistic hues along with the typical Woodstock blues and earthen hues.

Though Cramer focused soley on photography later in his career, his paintings represent some of the most important and vital documents illustrating the evolution of modernism in Woodstock.