His upbringing and vocation as an Episcopal minister would finally bring Eustace Ziegler to Alaska. The son of an Episcopal minister in Detroit, Ziegler studied at the Detroit Museum of Art before coming to Alaska, and would be ordained and take over the duties at St George’s Episcopal Church in Cordova, which he designed. Throughout his career, he painted many large religious works, amongst which the Arctic Madonna, using local Native mothers and children as models. He also created a number of biblical scenes incorporating the Alaska landscape.

In 1920 Ziegler returned eastward with his family to study at the Yale University School of Art for a year.

Commissions from the Alaska Steamship Company in Seattle would lead him to move there permanently in 1924. He did, however, continue to travel through Alaska and to paint what he saw there. Theodore Lambert was a friend and pupil, and traveled and painted together throughout Alaska.

By 1947 Ziegler had museum exhibitions of his work. Several public and private commissions came his way throughout the rest of his life. He continued to paint right up until the few remaining months before his death.

Ziegler was a major figure in the Seattle art scene, a founder and first president of the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Painters, and the first recipient of a lifetime award for artists in Washington State.