Frederick A. Butman was born in Gardiner, Maine in 1820 and also died there in 1871. He was a landscape and figure painter active from 1857 until his death.
Butman owned a drugstore in Gardiner until 1857 when he moved to San Francisco. From 1860 to 1865 he explored a thousand miles up the Columbia River. He is often called a "showy" painter.
He exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1867. He showed On Bear River at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1868. He is known to have sketched in Europe in the summer of 1869.
