Meadowlark Gallery: The Artist Biographies

A. B. Frost (1851-1928)
Arthur Burdett Frost or A. B. Frost was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1851 and died in Pasadena, California in 1928. The son of a textbook editor who died when Frost was eight, Frost worked for a wood engraver and then a lithographer while sketching in the evenings. He studied briefly with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His long career as an illustrator began with drawing on wood for "Hurly Burly" in 1874. By 1876, Frost was on the staff of Harper's, on his way to becoming one of the major Eastern illustrators of the turn of the century along with Pyle and Abbey. His specialty was folk humor such as Uncle Remus and The Tar-Baby. He was in London from 1877 to 1878, and then went to Paris from 1908 to 1916 to enable his two sons to study there. His residence was in New Jersey and Pennsylvania from 1883 to 1907. In the course of his book and magazine illustrations, Frost made Western drawings as commissioned. The most notable were for Theodore Roosevelt's, "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," 1885; Sage-Fowl Shooting, Cutting Off Band of Prong-Horn; Shot At A Mountain Ram; The Frostian Tete-a-tete of the buffalo at the top of a cliff meeting the dude hunter concluding his climb to the top, and Close Quarters with Old Ephraim. Frost also illustrated "Stories of a Western Town" in 1893. He died at the home of his son, John Frost, the Californian landscapist.
View high resolution images of works by A. B. Frost when available.