The family of Frederick Kost moved to Staten Island in 1867 and, with the exception of time spent in Europe, he remained there until 1900. After attending the Methfessel School (later the Staten Island Academy) he studied at the Cooper Union and in the National Academy's Antique Class in 1880. During the 1880s, he worked in Munich and Paris and by 1889 he had been elected a member of the Society of American Artists.
A landscape and marine painter, Kost had spent many summers as a youth on Long Island. He moved there permanently with his two sisters around 1900 and in 1906 they bought a home at Brookhaven. His coastal scenes, most of which depict the Staten Island shore, were pronounced by Charles Caffin as being nearest in spirit to those of Winslow Homer ("American Painters of the Sea," 556). At the Academy, he served on the Council for five years between 1909 and 1918. His unusually personal obituary in the Academy minutes tells of his genial manner, his affection for his dog, Caesar, and the problems that his German ancestry caused during World War I:
With the breaking out of the World War, a dark cloud began to gather about him, his racial feeling was intense, and he suffered. When 1917 came that cloud thickened until he fairly disappeared in it with drawing himself utterly and closing his lips tightly upon the bitterness within. To so kindly and direct and affectionate a nature it was a tragedy and we fully believe that the Soul of the man was never for a moment disloyal to the Art ideals and principles of his beloved Academy.
