Bower attended New York public schools, before entering the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia; he also studied with Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1902-03. In the early 1900s Bower was one of the first residents of Arden, Delaware, an experimental community founded by the sculptor, Frank Stephens, and the architect, Will Price, as an American manifestation of the principles of William Morris's arts and crafts movement.
Inititally, Bower worked in industrial design, mural decoration and stained glass, but after 1910 he concentrated on marine and landscape painting. In 1921 he purchased land near Delano Park, Maine, where he built a studio; a home designed by the architects J. C. and J. Howard Stevens was added in 1923.
In 1926 Bower was appointed director of fine arts for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia. However, by 1931 his affiliation with Maine was confirmed when he became director of the Portland School of Fine and Applied Art, and of the Sweat Museum (now the Portland Museum of Art); he held these posts for the next twenty years. Bower was the first chairman of Maine's state art commission; in 1936 he was head of the theatre and decorative design committee of the Portland Summer School of Creative Arts at Westbrook Junior College in Portland.
When Bower retired from his position with the Portland school and museum in 1951, he returned to Arden, Delaware.
