Between 1879 and 1882, he studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in the studios of G. Hackel, S. Wagner, and G. Benczur. Between 1882 and 1895 he continued his artistic studies in Paris under E. A. Carolus-Duran. He has also collaborated as an illustrator with the widely read Parisian magazines Le Monde Illustré, L’Illustration and Figaro. He also earned his living making copies of paintings by old masters such as Botticelli, Titian and Hans. In 1891 he was accepted as a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Between 1890 and 1899 he went on a series of artistic trips to London and Rome; in London, he painted portraits of members of the establishment on commission, while simultaneously studying traditional and contemporary English portrait painting, including works by T. Gainsborough, J. McNeill Whistler and the pre-Raphaelites.
He met members of the Polish artistic colony in Józef Chełmoński’s studio, visited Hôtel Lambert and Władysław Mickiewicz’s house (which was an ‘oasis of Polishness’). The images of famous political and cultural personalities, including Wiktor Osławski (1890), Prince Władysław Czartoryski (1892-1893), Cyprian Godebski (1893), Sarah Bernhard and Henrietta Fouquier, which were created at that time, secured his reputation as a salon portraitist. In 1894 he collaborated with Wojciech Kossak and Jan Styka on the creation of Racławice Panorama.
In 1895, he settled permanently in Kraków, where he became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. He held the post until 1934. In 1897, he founded a school of painting for women, where, among others, Wyczółkowski and Stanisławski taught. He was one of the founding members of the Sztuka (Art) Association of Polish Artists, established in 1897 and representing Polish art within the framework of the international exhibition movement. He was closely associated with the Viennese creative community as a member of the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs-Wiener Secession and a co-worker of Ver Sacrum magazine.
In 1910, he became the first elected Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Individual presentations of Axentowicz’s work took place in Kraków (1924, 1926, 1938 - posthumously), Warsaw (1930), and Łódź (1930).
The artist exhibited his works at almost all national and international exhibitions, including St. Louis (1904), Munich (1905), London (1906), Vienna (1908), Berlin (1913), Venice (1926) and Prague (1927). He also took part in international exhibitions in Berlin (1896), Munich (1935), Rome (1911), Venice (1914), Paris (1921) and Chicago (1927). In 1909, Emperor Franz Joseph awarded him the Order of the Iron Crown of the Third Class; in 1923, he was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta Third Class, the Commander’s Cross; in 1929, he was awarded the Medal of the Decade of Reborn Poland, and in 1936, the Commander’s Cross with Star. At the National Exhibition in Poznań in 1929, he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal.
Axentowicz’s work developed in two ways: the artist gained recognition as a portraitist and as a painter of genre scenes. His genre art has its origins in the period of his studies in Munich, when Axentowicz painted episodes from rural life in a realistic convention (A Funeral in Russia, 1882; Italian Florist, 1882; Gooseherd, 1883). He also made attempts at historical painting (Würzburg in 1811, 1884), which was conditioned by academic teaching, and illustrated the history of the Slavs of the 4th century (Funeral of the Slavic Chief; March of the Warriors; Old Slavic Rally).