An engineer and shipbuilder, serving at sea in the First World War, Frank Mason began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1900 and was elected to the Royal institute in 1929.
There is an easy flow in his style which is particularly noticeable in his marine drawings, but he also had a strong sense of design and was as a result was able to work as a book illustrator and poster artist for the railway companies. Frank Mason was in Venice in the early 1900s and encountered all the problems of painting in Venice at that time. As Frank Richards who was painting with Dudley Hardy notes, ‘One gets used to the Venetian crowd whilst sketching, the only objectionable part is that sometimes an admirer will claim the drawing more of his own than yours, taking the canvas off the easel when your back is turned. The flower girls who ply their daily business in the Piazza San Marco are a great nuisance, and if you take any notice of them they will pester you everyday.’

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