Born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Fred Wagner attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied under Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). He received the Fellowship Prize from the Academy in 1914 and an honorable mention from the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1922. In 1913 Wagner exhibited two works in the Armory Show in New York. He was a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club and the Philadelphia Watercolor Club. Wagner taught at the Addingham Summer School of Outdoor Painting in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. Although he mainly worked in the vicinity of Philadelphia, particularly around New Hope, he also traveled to Canada and to Europe, where he sketched the French countryside. His work is in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Art Club, the Reading (Pennsylvania) Public Museum and Art Gallery, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.