Gaines Ruger Donoho was born in Mississippi in December 1857. He early encountered the tragedy of life in general, and the Civil War in particular, when his father was killed, and he and his mother were moved to Vicksburg by General Ruger’s Confederate cavalry. The General was his mother’s relative. Donoho and his mother later went to Washington, D.C. where the young artist began to paint and study with area teachers. His interests tended to the Hudson River School painter Jervis McEntee.

Received silver medal at the Paris Exposition 1889. The Carnegie Museum of Art prize, honorable mention in 1911 for ‘A Garden’.

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