Frank Hoffman was born in Chicago, Frank Hoffman sketched horses while working as a jockey until he was nineteen. Later, he sketched prize fights, operas, and other subjects in ink for the Chicago American Weekly newspaper and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1916 the Great Northern Railroad hired Hoffman to paint wildlife to help promote Glacier National Park in Montana. After seeing a Leon Gaspard exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, he first visited Taos in 1919 and began spending summers there while wintering in Chicago.

Hoffman became a successful illustrator for Cream of Wheat, General Electric, and the Cuban Tobacco Company and Western articles by Zane Grey, Conrad Richter, and Jack London, published in Country Gentleman, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and The Ladies Home Journal.

In 1928, he established his Hobby Horse Rancho two miles from the Taos plaza continuing to illustrate and paint on ranches in the Taos area such as the C S and the Bell. Between 1940 and 1953, he produced over 150 Western and outdoor paintings for Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul, Minnesota, then the largest calendar house in the United States.

Eye strain forced Hoffman to give up painting in 1953, and he died and is buried at Taos.