As Frederick Brett Russell (as an artist he dropped the final 'l' from his name), was born at Walworth, London on 25 June and baptised at Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars Road, Southwark on 14 December 1813, son of George Russell and his wife Sarah née Oney. Apprenticed to architect Henry William Inwood (1794-1843), architect of St Pancras new church, London. Before reaching his majority, an aunt left him an inheritance which enabled him to enjoy a life of leisure, purchasing a small yacht and, with a crew, he sailed round the coasts of England. About 1840, his wealth gone, he came to live at Ipswich joining architect John Medland Clark (1813-1849) in Upper Brook Street, who designed the Custom House in Quay Street, Ipswich. He married an Ipswich girl, Sarah Ann Stockins, and in 1851 living at 14 Berners Street, Ipswich with his 37 year old wife Sarah and two Ipswich born children, Frederick Brett (born 1843) and Katherine (born 1845). He had shared his Berners Street studio with Edward Robert Smythe [q.v.] and Russel corroborated with George Walter [Wat] Hagreen [q.v.] and John Wodderspoon (1805-1862), the Ipswich journalist, in the production of 'Picturesque Antiquities of Ipswich' (Ipswich 1845) which had covers in silk from the then Ipswich silk factory. Russel was hon. sec. of Suffolk Fine Arts' Association & Art Union and exhibited at the Suffolk Fine Arts Association exhibition at the New Lecture Hall of the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution in August 1850, watercolours 'A View in St Mary at the Elms, Ipswich', 'New Place, near Ipswich' and 'A Cottage at Belstead'. He seems to have wandered from Ipswich as in 1861, an 'artist painter' at 5 Henby Street, Luddesdown, a civil parish in the Gravesend district of Kent, with his wife and their two children and where his wife died in 1863 and, after a short spell in Norwich, returned to Ipswich in 1866 where he died at Tyler Street on 1 November 1869. His son Frederick Brett Russell, jun. married at Gravesend in 1867, Phoebe Wright where he was employed as a house carpenter living at Milton, Gravesend.