Frederick Stanley Haines was born at Meaford, Ontario, in 1879. In 1896, he moved to Toronto where he studied at the Central School of Art under G.A. Reid and William Cruickshank. In 1913, he travelled to Antwerp, Belgium, to study at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts. He was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, and became president of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1939. He held several important posts: the Commissioner of Fine Art for the Canadian National Exhibition from 1924 to 1951, the Curator of the Art Gallery of Toronto from 1928 to 1932, and the Principal of the Ontario College of Art, from 1932 to 1951. On his retirement in 1951, he moved to Thornhill, Ontario, where he died in 1960.
