Gordon Hope Grant was sent to Scotland for schooling at age 13, and the four-month sail around Cape Horn remained a permanent influence on his career. He studied art in Heatherly and Lambeth Art Schools in London, and then in 1895, became a staff artist for the San Francisco "Examiner." The next year, he took the same type of job for the "New York World".  He also worked for "Puck" magazine for 8 years and did illustration for children's and adult books. For "Harper's Weekly", he served as a combat artist for both the Boer War and the Mexican Revolution.

His reputation as a marine painter became much stronger after 1906 when prints of his painting of the U.S. Constitution went on the market with popular reception, and the monies were used to preserve the old ship. Grant and others were successful lobbying Congress to designate the vessel a national monument, and Grant's painting of the U.S. Constitution is in the White House collection, where it has hung in the Oval Office. Grant also painted portraits, streets, harbors, beaches and marines, and was an illustrator, whose work included pulp fiction for "Popular Detective" in the 1930s. He was the cover designer for the first edition of the Boy Scout Handbook in 1911. Skilled with watercolor, Grant was honored many times by the American Watercolor Society. Memberships included the Society of illustrators, Salmagundi Club, Allied Artists of America, New York Society of Painters, American Federation of Artists and others.

Grant created 88 prints for Associated American Artists (AAA) between the late 1930s and 1940s. His brother, Douglas Grant was also a watercolorist, and his nephews include artist Gordon Kenneth Grant, who painted the murals in the Ventura, California and artist/printmaker Campbell Grant, who is heard in several Walt Disney films, and is credited with some of the story development for Fantasia (1940), and character development in Pinocchio (1940).