Frederick Thomas Penson [also known as Frederick T. Penson] was born the son of William Henry Penson (1801-1889) a draughtsman in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England on 6 March 1866. He studied at Stoke School of Art in Stoke-on-Trent and in 1883 won a national scholarship to attend the National Art Training School in South Kensington [now the Royal College of Art] in London. He subsequently returned to Stoke-on-Trent where he worked as a watercolourist, primarily painting landscapes. He exhibited intermittently at the Royal Academy in London from 1891 to 1934. He also participated in the first exhibition of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society at the New Gallery in London in 1888 where he showed a design in watercolour for a fresco entitled "The Spirit of Poetry".