Born in Chicago, Frances Foy had a successful career there as a painter in oil and watercolor and etcher, printmaker and muralist. She also traveled widely including to Sweden, France, Germany, and Italy.

Foy studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Wellington Reynolds and with George Bellows and Randall Davey and later exhibited in a one-person show at the Institute as well as in annual Institute exhibitions from 1929 through 1940. When she was a student at the Institute, she was awarded the Jules F. Brower Prize and the Frank G. Logan Prize.

During the Depression, she won an anonymous competition to have a commission from the U.S. Treasury Department Section of the Fine Arts, followed by four other commissions, fo...