BORN in Glasgow 8th October, 1862, Mr. Docharty left school when thirteen years of age, to begin the designing of calico prints under his father. At night he studied drawing under Robert Greenlees at the School of art, and at the age of fourteen he had a water colour hung in the Glasgow Fine Art Institute. He had also a picture hung in the Royal Academy when he was nineteen, with this encouragement, when twenty years of age, he made the attempt to live as an artist. The effort proved premature, and he returned to the work of designing with the firm of Inglis & Wakefield. A few years later, however, having saved some little means, he again started as a painter of pictures, and he has since remained in the ranks of art. In 1894 he went to Paris, and studied for a time under Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens.
    For some fourteen years he painted at Kilkerran in Ayrshire, living in a cottage on the estate of Sir James Fergusson, Bart., and producing some of his best work amid the fine pastoral and woodland scenery of the region. Some of the pictures painted there found permanent homes on the continent. One in particular was purchased at Venice International Exhibition of Fine arts by His Excellency the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and is now in the Consulta Palace at Rome. During the last few years Mr. Docharty has resided in summer at the village of Symington in Ayrshire. finding inspiration in the old trees of Dankeith, and at Dundonald and Auchans. He has twice made sojourn for purposes of painting and study in Holland, and in 1903 made a prolonged tour on the continent, going by Paris and the Riviera to Italy, where he made a study of the works of the old masters of the art in the galleries of Genoa, Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice. In 1904 he had a large picture of Glen Finlas, painted during a sojourn at Brig o' Turk, hung at the International Exhibition at St. Louis; and in 1907, his "September, Glen Falloch," exhibited at the Glasgow Institute, was purchased by Mr. Finlayson of Merchiston and presented to Glasgow Corporation. It is now in the art Galleries at Kelvingrove.

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