Born in Ontario in 1836, Frederick Arthur Verner studied at London's Heatherley's Academy in 1856 and served in the British military, first with the Yorkshire militia in 1858 and then in the British Legion in 1860. After returning to Canada in 1862, he worked as a photograph colourist while dedicating much of his time to sketching the wilderness and Indigenous communities. Verner co-founded the Ontario Society of Artists in 1872 and exhibited extensively until moving to England in 1880, where his romantic depictions of life on the prairies gained significant popularity.