Frederick Carl Frieseke (April 7, 1874 – August 24, 1939) was an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his life as an expatriate in France.

[4] In 1893, Frieseke graduated from Owosso High School, then began his artistic training at the Art Institute of Chicago,[2] studying with Frederick Warren Freer and John Vanderpoel.

[6] The following year, he moved to France, where he would remain, except for short visits to the United States and elsewhere, as an expatriate for the rest of his life.

[7] He did continue his education, enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris, studying under Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens,[3] and receiving criticism from Auguste Joseph Delécluse.

During this time he sketched and painted in watercolors, and he initially planned to make that his specialty,[9] but he was encouraged by Académie Carmen instructor Frederick William MacMonnies to work in oils.

[5] By his post-1900 work, his palette had evolved toward that of the Impressionists, becoming light and colorful; however, he still retained the strong linear customs of art back in the United States.

[5] Although well known as an Impressionist, some of his work, with its "intense, almost arbitrary colors", demonstrates the Post-Impressionist influence of artists Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard.

It combined the decorative style of Les Nabis, expressively using color and pattern, with classic Impressionist interests in atmosphere and sunlight.

In fact it seems entirely artificial ... a stunning concoction of blues and magentas frosted with early summer green and flecks of white.

[16] Frieseke's artistic influence was greatly felt among the Americans in Giverny, most of whom shared his Midwestern background and had also begun their art studies in Chicago.

[5] Frieseke preferred the attitudes in France over those which he encountered in the United States: "I am more free and there are not the Puritanical restrictions which prevail in America – here I can paint the nude out of doors.

While on his first visit back home in Owosso in 1902, Frieseke wrote, "I get much pleasure in shocking the good Church people with the nudes".

[22] The New York Times proclaimed in June 1915: "Mr. Frieseke, whose accomplished work is well known to New Yorkers, says the last word in the style that was modern before the Modernists came along.

A sense of gayety, an entertaining and well considered pattern, a remarkable knowledge of the effect of outdoor light on color are found in nearly all of his most recent paintings.

"[23] He received two gold medals from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1920 and he also won the popular prize, decided by artists as well as the viewing public.