Alfred Conquest, the son of Susan Caldecott Conquest (1851 Census), a solicitor's wife, was born in Woodford, Essex. He based himself largely in the southeast, where he may also have been a student of art prior to our notice of him working in France.

C Wood describes him as a London landscape artist who worked prior to 1882 in Pont Aven. However, he is listed in the 1881 Census as an 'artist painter' living with his older sister Emma and brother-in-law's household in Leicestershire. The family lived in the rectory of Stondon Wyville, where the Rev Charles Edward Armstrong was the Rector. Though not listed as a visitor, it may nevertheless have been for a short while in between travels to the continent and to Cornwall. 

Conquest exhibited in the Paris Salon 1882-3, and paid his first visit to Cornwall in 1884. The paintings that he sent in to the RA in 1885 were of Brittany and Cornwall. In 1890 he was living at 24 The Terrace, St Ives, and continuing to exhibit widely, a submission of that year at the RA, being a painting of Walberswick (Suffolk). Previously he had submitted A Southwold Pier (near Walberswick) also to the RA, also an artists' haunt visited by other Newlyn and St Ives artists of the time.

His sending-in address, nevertheless, remained at Woodford in 1894 and 1896, but had moved to Hastings by 1902.

In the 1901 Census he is listed as a Lodger at No 15 Cambridge Gardens in Hastings, Sussex (age 47) and single. He exhibits from Hastings until at least 1904, at which time the trail is lost. As yet the date and place of his death cannot be confirmed: there are two Alfred Conquest deaths listed in the GRO records of men with that name born c1849 and 1854, and these died in 1928 in Tonbridge, Kent and in 1922 in Luton, Bedfordshire.