Painter, printmaker, and art critic Frank Lewis Emanuel was born at Bayswater, London on September 15, 1865. His formal art education began at the Slade School of Fine Art under Alphonse Legros; upon graduation he moved to Paris where he attended Académie Julian, studying under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury.

Emanuel, a student of representational styles, was a staunch opponent of modern art, publishing art criticism in the Architectural Review and the Manchester Guardian, and authoring 'The Illustrators of Montmartre' (1903) and 'Etching and Etchings' (1930), among others. He exhibited at the Paris Salon; the Royal Academy from 1886; New English Art Club and in Japan, Australia, America, Germany, Holland and elsewhere. He exhibited at the Ipswich Art Club in 1933 from 2 St John's Gardens, Kensington, London, a pencil drawing 'Cromis Mill, Mousehold. Destroyed 1933' and he produced a large body of work at Walberswick and Southwold in Suffolk and had a show of his watercolours in the Méryon Galleries in 1912, and many of his paintings being reproduced as picture postcards by Raphael Tuck.

Emanuel taught etching at the Central School of Arts & Crafts 1918–1930, and he travelled throughout Europe, South Africa and Ceylon. He died at St Charles Hospital, Kensington, London on May 7th, 1948, aged 83.