The eighth of ten children, Frank Fowler attended the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn. He is said to have gone to Europe in 1869 but does not seem to have begun studying art until 1873, when he received lessons from Edwin White in Florence. Two years later he moved to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and under Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran. Like other American students of Carolus-Duran, Fowler worked on the Apotheosis of Marie de Medici ceiling decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. In 1878 he married the artist Mary B. Odenheimer.
A year later he was back in New York, where his works became a regular feature of every Academy annual exhibition until the end of his life. A writer and critic as well as an artist, Fowler authored a number of articles on American and European art. In 1885 he published two "how-to" books, Oil Painting and Drawing in Charcoal and Crayon. His Portrait and Figure Painting appeared in 1894.
Fowler's career took a turn upward around 1892, just at the time of his election to the Academy. He received a commission for ceiling panels in New York's Waldorf Hotel, which he completed in 1893. That same year, a large group of his portraits was shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Toward the end of his career, he focused almost entirely on portraiture. He served on the Academy Council during 1901-2.
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