The photographer and landscape painter Frederick De Bourg Richards was born in Wilmington, Delaware. During the middle 1850s Richards traveled extensively in Europe, where he executed commissioned paintings of the Swiss Alps and Italian countryside. Around 1865 he devoted himself to painting landscapes only. He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1848 and 1891, the National Academy of Design from 1865 to 1876, and the Brooklyn Art Association in 1875 and 1876. He was also active in the Artists' Fund Society, the Philadelphia Society of Artists, the Art Club of Philadelphia, and the American Art Union in New York. Richards, who was a member of the Society of Friends, died at his residence in Philadelphia.