Charles Edwin Fripp was born in Camden Town, London, England on 4 September 1854 and was the son of the landscape painter George Arthur Fripp (1813-1896) with whom he received his initial training as an artist. He also studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and in Nuremberg. By the mid-1870s he had started working as a painter and illustrator and became known for his detailed depictions of battle scenes. In 1875 Fripp was employed by the Graphic (London) as an artist-illustrator and in the 1870s and 1880s covered various wars in South Africa in which the British Army were engaged, including the Kaffir War of 1878, the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879; and the First Anglo–Boer War of 1880-81. In 1885 The Graphic appointed him their Special Artist and over the next fifteen years covered with his brush the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, the Spanish–American War in 1899, and other conflicts in the world.