Carl Sprinchorn was born in Broby, Sweden in 1887. He immigrated to America in 1903 at the age of 15 to study under Robert Henri at the New York School of Art and later the Henri School. Though early critics remarked on a certain "Nordic spirit" in his work, and biographers have noted his family's connection to Vanas, a country estate with a storied art collection, Sprinchorn credited Henri as the greatest influence on his artistic career.

In 1910, Sprinchorn exhibited at the annual Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts show, then at the Rand School in New York alongside Henri, George Bellows, George Luks, and John Sloan. Sprinchorn travelled widely through the 1910s, living in Los Angeles, California for a span of several months in 1912 and 1913 and teaching at the Art Students League there. From 1914 to 1915, he lived in Paris and took classes at the Académie Colarossi, while returning to the United States to spend the summer months at artists' colonies in Ogunquit, and on Monhegan Island. Sprinchorn maintained ties with the artists of the Ashcan School and the broader art community in New York City during this period. He counted Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Marguerite and William Zorach, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, and Florine Stettheimer among his friends, and,  like them, was considered part of the vanguard of American modernism.

Springhorn exhibited extensively in New York upon his return, showing work at the National Arts Club; the Society of Independent Artists; the New Gallery, where he served as director from 1922-1925; the Whitney Studio Club, the Roerich Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. He had solo exhibitions at the Worcester Art Museum in 1922, Rhen Galleries in 1927, the Ainslie Gallery in 1928, the Penthouse Gallery in 1930, and the Sullivan Gallery in 1936. Between 1937 and 1943, Sprinchorn spent long periods in rural Maine, painting the forests and the people who worked them. These images, among the most compelling of his oeuvre, shaped Sprinchorn's legacy today.

Sprinchorn works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art, in addition to numerous other public and private collections.