Gaines Ruger Donoho (December 21, 1857 – January 28, 1916) was an American painter.

Biography

Early life

Gaines Ruger Donoho was born on December 21, 1857, in

Church Hill, Mississippi Church Hill is a small unincorporated community in Jefferson County, Mississippi, United States. It is located eight miles east of the Mississippi River and approximately 18 miles north of Natchez at the intersection of highway 553 and Church Hill ...

.Phyllis Braff
Resurrecting an Obscure Landscapist
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', January 14, 1996Memorial Exhibition: Paintings by the late Ruger Donoho, The MacBeth Gallery
/ref> He grew up on his father Robert's plantation in Church Hill, Mississippi, until the elder Donoho was killed during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. One of his mother's relatives, General

Thomas H. Ruger Thomas Howard Ruger (April 2, 1833 – June 3, 1907) was an American soldier and lawyer who served as a Union general in the American Civil War. After the war, he was a superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New ...

(1833–1907), had them moved to New England with the rest of her family. He was trained as a painter at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and spent eight years in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

Career

He practised as an

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

and

Tonalist Tonalist (foaled February 11, 2011) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse best known for winning the 2014 Belmont Stakes, beating the favored California Chrome, who was attempting to win the Triple Crown. Tonalist won the Peter Pan Stakes in ...

painter in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. In 1891, he moved to East Hampton, where he continued to paint. He is best known for his landscape and garden paintings, some of which are reminiscent of

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

's Giverney garden paintings. Additionally, he also did some drawings. Some of his work is exhibited at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in Manhattan,

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and at the

Mississippi Museum of Art The Mississippi Museum of Art is a public museum in Jackson, Mississippi. It is the largest museum in Mississippi. Location It is located at the corner of 380 South Lamar Street and 201 East Pascagoula Street in Jackson, Mississippi.Lee Ellis, ''F ...

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...

John Lavery Sir John Lavery (20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941) was a Northern Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Life and career John Lavery was born in inner North Belfast, baptised at St Patrick's Church, Belfast a ...

(1856–1941) painted his portrait. Brooklyn Museum - La Marcellerie - Gaines Ruger Donoho - overall

Personal life

He was married to Matilda Ackley Donoho. He died on January 28, 1916, in New York City. After Donoho's death, Matilda Donoho sold the Long Island property to the Childe Hassams - good friends.

Selected paintings

*''Wind Flowers'' (Metropolitan Museum of Art). *''East Hampton Garden'' (

Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages The Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages, known as the Long Island Museum (LIM), is a nine-acre museum located in Stony Brook, New York. The LIM serves the Long Island community by preserving and displaying its collection of ...

). *''La Marcellerie'' (Brooklyn Museum).

Secondary source

*Ronald G. Pisano, ''G. Ruger Donoho (1857–1916): A Retrospective Exhibition'' (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1977, 21 pages). *René Paul Barilleaux, ''G. Ruger Donoho: A Painter's Path'' (Jackson, Mississippi: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1995).

References

External links

''Memorial exhibition''
an exhibition catalog of the artist. {{DEFAULTSORT:Donoho, Gaines Ruger People from Jefferson County, Mississippi People from Manhattan People from East Hampton (town), New York Art Students League of New York alumni 19th-century American painters American male painters 1857 births 1916 deaths 20th-century American painters Painters from Mississippi Painters from New York City 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists