Frank Vincent DuMond came to New York in 1884 after a public-school education in his hometown. In order to pay for classes with J. Carroll Beckwith and William Sartain at the Art Students League, he immediately began doing illustration work for the Daily Graphic newspaper. The quality of his drawings led to a job offer from Harper's Weekly and later from Century and McClure's magazines. Near the end of the decade he left for Paris, where he studied under Gustav Boulanger, Benjamin Constant, and Jules Lefebvre. In France in 1890, DuMond attracted attention when his Holy Family won a medal at the Salon. The next year, he showed Christ and the Fishermen (1891, private collection [1983]), thus establishing himself as a painter of religious subjects.
He returned to New York in 1892, showed one painting, Monastic Life, in that year's Academy annual exhibition, and began teaching at the Art Students League. With the exception of the years 1895-1901, DuMond was a member of the League faculty thereafter until his death. During his long, influential tenure at the league, his thousands of students included John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Norman Rockwell. He stressed study in the life classes rather than the antique and, at the beginning of his teaching career, had the reputation of employing liberal methods. He also conducted a summer class nearly every year, variously in France, Italy, Canada, Connecticut (where he founded the Old Lyme Summer School of Art), and Vermont. He made his most extensive trip alone, however, journeying to Palestine in 1894 to gather material on which to base illustrations for a Harper's article.
In addition to his easel paintings on religious themes, portraits, and landscapes, DuMond executed murals, notably for the triumphal arch of San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and in the Hotel des Artistes in Manhattan.