Thomas Friedensen was born at Leeds, England, in 1879.

He studied at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington under Sir Frank Short, and in 1912 had an exhibit in the black and white room at the Royal Academy. He also showed a watercolour and two oils at the 1919, 1920 and 1921 exhibitions and exhibited paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints with numerous art societies and commercial galleries in London.

He met Sydney Long while still in England in 1920 through the Graphic Art Society, where Long was a founding member. Both artists later became members of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society.

Friedensen came to Australia in 1921 and was elected an associate of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales in 1922.

He established a reputation as a capable (and prolific) etcher and is represented in the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth galleries.

Friedensen was widely travelled and his etchings of European subjects were popular in Australia – six were acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW in the 1920s. He took to Australian subject matter with great enthusiasm, exhibiting etchings of rural subjects alongside his European prints, and he continued to make prints of European, English and African subjects while living in Sydney.

He returned to Europe in 1930 and died at Cannes in the south of France about the beginning of June 1931.