Painter, printmaker, and craftsman Frederick Victor Poole was born in Southampton, England, on June 21, 1865. He studied at the Academie Julian in Paris from 1890 - '91 and in London with painter Frederick Brown. By the 1920s he was living in North America, teaching at Toronto University and eventually settling in Chicago, Illinois, where he taught at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). He exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts in 1922, the AIC in 1928; the Festival of Religious Art, Chicago and Environs, 1931; and the Century of Progress Exhibition, Chicago, 1933.

Frederick Poole was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists, the Chicago Printmakers Society, and the Chicago Gallery Artists. He died in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on July 4, 1936. His work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Toronto Public Library, Toronto, Canada; and the Art Institute of Chicago.