Frank Mahony was born in Melbourne and moved to Sydney at the age of ten. In the 1890s he worked as an illustrator and watercolour artist for the Bulletin, the Sydney Mail, the Antipodean and other journals. His bush subjects, notably horses and swagmen, became popular and his portrait of Henry Lawson (q.v.) 'on the wallaby' became the frontispiece of Lawson's In the Days When the World was Wide (1896). He illustrated Lawson's While the Billy Boils (1896). Mahony also illustrated some of the works of A. B. Paterson and Louise Mack, and Dot and the Kangaroo (1899) by Ethel Pedley (qq.v.). He departed for England in 1901.
