Francis Seth Frost was born in West Cambridge, MA, in late April 1825. It is unclear whether he received any formal artistic training, however, he had an established painting practice by the late 1840s. In 1853, Frost became a pioneer visitor to White Mountains, climbing to Tip Top House on Mount Washington. His first known painting, View of Tuckerman’s Ravine, was included in the Boston Athenaeum’s Spring 1854 exhibition, where he continued to exhibit through 1864. Throughout his life, Frost traveled throughout New England, the Hudson River Valley, and the Western United States producing an extensive, now mostly lost, collection of paintings.

Frost was a founding member of the Boston Art Club and painted in the Rocky Mountains with Albert Bierstadt in 1859. He exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from 1854 to 1864. However, he began to fade into obscurity, and by 1990, only seven paintings by Frost were documented in the Inventory of American Paintings at the Smithsonian Institution.

Frost died in Arlington, MA, in 1902. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.