Fred Maxwell was born in Denmark and spent part of his youth in the care of an English sea captain and his wife–sailing around the world, eventually becoming a merchant seaman. Maxwell arrived in San Francisco in 1890 and traveled over the west, prospecting and painting landscapes. He settled in Yerington, Nevada, in 1912 and entrusted a number of his paintings to the Nevada Historical Society. He disappeared in the central Nevada desert in 1932; a prospector named "Burro" Smith discovered his body four years later.