Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Docharty, James
DOCHARTY, JAMES (1829–1878), landscape-painter, born in 1829 at Bonhill, Dumbartonshire, was the son of a calico printer. He was trained as a pattern designer at the school of design in Glasgow, after which he continued his studies for some years in France. Returning to Glasgow he began to practise on his own account, and succeeded so well that when he was about thirty-three years of age he was able to give up designing patterns and to devote himself exclusively to landscape-painting, which he had long been assiduously cultivating in his leisure hours. His earlier works were for the most part scenes from the lochs of the Western Highlands, which he exhibited at the Glasgow Fine Art Institute. Afterwards he extended his range of subjects to the Clyde, and to other highland rivers and lochs, which he treated with vigour and thorough unconventionality of style. He was an earnest student of nature, and his latest and best works are distinguished by the quiet harmony of their colour. Most of his works appeared in Glasgow, but he was also a constant exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Academy, and from 1865 to 1877 his pictures were frequently seen at the Royal Academy in London. Among the best of these works were: ‘The Haunt of the Red Deer on the Dee, Braemar’ (1869), ‘The Head of Loch Lomond’ (1873), ‘Glencoe’ (1874), ‘The River Achray, Trossachs’ (1876), ‘A Good Fishing-day, Loch Lomond’ (1877), and his last exhibited works, ‘The Trossachs’ (1878), in the Royal Scottish Academy, and a ‘Salmon Stream’ in the Glasgow Institute exhibition of 1878. All his works are in private collections. In 1876 failing health compelled him to leave home, and he made a lengthened tour in Egypt, Italy, and France, without, however, deriving much benefit from it. Late in 1877 he was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy. He died from consumption at Pollokshields, Glasgow, on 5 April 1878, and was buried in Cathcart cemetery.
[Scotsman, Edinburgh Courant, and Glasgow Herald, 6 April 1878; Art Journal, 1878, p. 155; Armstrong's Scottish Painters, 1888, p. 73; Catalogues of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1865–77.]