Harrington Mann was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 7 October 1864. He studied at Glasgow School of Art; under Alphonse Legros. at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London; and under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre at the Académie Julian in Paris. He subsequently worked as a painter, decorative artist and stained glass designer. He designed stained glass for the Glasgow firm J. & W. Guthrie, including the Crucifixion window for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ardrossan, Ayrshire. Mann was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London from 1885 to 1937 and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh from 1879 to 1936. He also exhibited at the Agnew & Sons Gallery, Dudley Gallery, Goupil Gallery, the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, the Leicester Galleries, the New English Art Club, the New Gallery, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Royal Society of Oil Painters, and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in London; the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Manchester City Art Gallery; and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.