Charles Théodore Frère was born in Paris on 21st June 1814. As a young man he showed a strong inclination towards painting as a career, despite his father’s hopes that he would become a musician. He studied under the landscape artist Jules Coignet (1798-1860) and then under Camille Roqueplan (1803-1855). On completing his apprenticeship he travelled extensively in France, exhibiting at the Salon for the first time in 1834, and again in 1835 and 1836.

A visit to Algeria in 1837 changed the course of his life. He exhibited his first Orientalist painting at the Salon in 1839 and from then on painted only scenes of the Muslim world. He stayed in Algeria for a year, painting several large pictures, which were later bought by King Wurttemberg. He appears to have travelled almost annually to Algeria until about 1850. In 1851 he journeyed further East, stopping at Malta, Greece and Smyrna on his way to Constantinople where he stayed for eighteen months. He then went on to Syria, Palestine, Nubia and Egypt, where he had a studio in Cairo.