Gaines Ruger Donoho (1857-1916)
The son of a prosperous plantation owner, Gaines Ruger Donoho was born in Church Hill, Mississippi in December, 1857. The onset of the Civil War, coupled with the death of his father in the early 1860′s, severely disrupted Donoho’s childhood. His mother Julia was of Northern descent, and her relatives arranged for their move at the end of the war. Eventually, they settled in Washington, D.C., where Donoho engaged in his studies. By 1878 he “had begun to study painting in earnest” departing for New York to enroll at the newly formed Art Students League where his teachers were Walter Shirlaw and William Merritt Chase.
Only briefly in New York, Donoho traveled to France in 1879 to expand his training and experience. In 1880 he enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris where he studied under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Donoho remained in the Academie for seven years, during which time he explored the area around Barbizon.
Donoho’s works from the early 1880′s were executed at Grez-sur-Loing, a small village close to the Fontainebleau forest. “At Grez, Donoho made drawings which became the basis for his first major compositions (such as) “The Edge of the Forest”.
In a contemporary discussion of the American Gallery in the Art Building of the Cotton Centennial Exposition held in 1885 in New Orleans, Donoho is one of a handful of American artists who is mentioned. “Mr. Donoho belongs to those young American painters of whom we are justly proud, but like Bridgman, he has become thoroughly imbued with the teachings of the modern French school.” (page 407, “The World’s Industrial & Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans, 1884-85″ by Herbert S. Fairall.)
For further information, consult “G. Ruger Donoho, A Painter’s Path”, by Rene Paul Brailleaux and Victoria J. Beck, Mississippi Museum of Art, 1995.