Raised in Philadelphia, Frederick Waugh came from an artistic family. He undoubtedly received his earliest artistic training during his youth, for his father, Samuel Bell Waugh, was a landscape painter and portraitist, while his mother, Mary Eliza Young Ward, was a miniaturist. In 1880, Waugh entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he remained for three years, studying under Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz. He spent the summer of 1882 in France with Henry Rankin Poore.
Waugh continued his training in Paris in 1883, with Adolphe William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Academie Julian. During the summer of 1884, he painted at Grez-sur-Loing and may also have been in Brittany, with Alexander Harrison. His early landscapes suggest the influence of French realists like Jules Bastien-LePage.
Following the death of his father in 1885, Waugh returned to Philadelphia, where he worked in commercial illustration for the next seven years at the firm of Dakin and Petrie. In 1892, he married Clara Eugenie Bunn, whom he had known at the Pennsylvania Academy. The couple honeymooned in Europe, touring England and Scotland before settling in Paris for two years. It was during his two year stay at Sark in the Channel Island from 1893 to 1895, that Waugh began executing the seascapes of surging waves for which he is best known. After he moved to England in 1896, Waugh lived in St. Ives, Cornwall, sharing a studio with Hayley Lever, before a brief period in Bedforshire. Before Waugh settled in London in 1901, he spent two years in Hendon, outside the English capital. While supporting himself by illustrating articles for British publications, Waugh maintained a studio in St. Ives, studying the English coastline for his marines.
Although he had visited the United States briefly in 1905, spending the summer on Bailey Island in Maine, Waugh settled in Montclair, New Jersey in 1908. Patrons like William T. Evans enabled him to give up commercial illustration and concentrate on his simple views of the waves and sky.
Waugh visited Monhegan Island, Maine, during the summers of 1911 and 1914. From 1916 until 1927, the artist resided in Kent, Connecticut. During World War I, he worked in camouflage for the United States Navy. The artist traveled extensively in the next decade, searching for scenic coastlines for his work. He visited the Caribbean in 1920 and toured British Columbia two years later. From 1927 until his death, Waugh lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, his studio was built out of timber from ship wrecked schooners.
Leaving an oeuvre estimated to include 2,500 works, Waugh was an extremely prolific and successful artist. The Academy described him as "an internationally known marine painter . . . a painter of seascapes largely through public demand" following his death.
