Stanhope Forbes was born in 1857. He trained at the Royal Academy School and began exhibiting there in 1885. The founder of the Newlyn School, a group of painters who worked in the Newlyn fishing village in Cornwall.

Forbes, who became an RA in 1910, is only known to have produced one painting as an official war artist. This was WRNS Ratings Sail-making (1918), a scene on board HMS Essex in Devonport. Stanhope Forbes died in 1947.