Frederick Mulhaupt was born and raised in Rock Port, Missouri, by prosperous German parents. His first job was for a newspaper and magazine in Dodge City, Kansas, but he soon moved to Kansas City. There he apprenticed to an itinerant painter and enrolled in the Kansas City School of Design. Later he moved to Chicago, where he enrolled in at the Art Institute. He remained in Chicago for many years, earning the respect of fellow artists, acting as one of the founding members of the Palette and Chisel Club, and eventually becoming an instructor in figure classes at the Art Institute.

In 1904 he moved to New York City and lived at the Salmagundi Club. Afterward he moved to Paris. He spent several years there and was exposed to a host of modern art movements, namely Impressionism. He returned to the States and eventually ended up dividing his time between New York and Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1922 Mulhaupt moved to Gloucester permanently, where he came into his own as an artist. 

Mulhaupt remained in Massachusetts. He was active in the Boston North Shore Art Association. The artist exhibited at such major museums as the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Significantly, Mulhaupt exhibited At the Guinea Wharf, Gloucester at the 1923 Tenth Annual Exhibition of the Allied Artists of America in New York. In 1926 he was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design and remained a important part of the New York art world even though he lived in Massachusetts.