Although born in Mississippi in December 1857, Gaines Ruger Donoho and his mother were transported by General Ruger's [a relative of Mrs. Donoho] cavalrymen to Vicksburg after his father died in the Civil War. Donoho and his mother later settled in Washington, DC, where he began painting under local artists and studied the work of Hudson River painter Jervis McEntee.

In 1878, Donoho went to New York to join the Art Students League, but only stayed a short while before sailing to Paris to study with other young American expatriates at the Académie Julian. Donoho stayed abroad until 1887, becoming acquainted with Frank Benson, John Henry Twachtman, Edmund Tarbell, and, after his arrival in 1886, Childe Hassam. By 1882, Donoho was regularly sending canvases home to be exhibited at important annual exhibitions, including the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the 1885 World International Cotton Exposition held in New Orleans. One work, La Marcellerie, was acclaimed by Hassam as "probably the best out-of-door picture painted by an American at that time."

Returning home in 1887, Donoho set up his studio in New York. Several years later, as William Merritt Chase was establishing the Shinnecock Summer School in Southampton, Donoho moved to the nearby community of East Hampton where he remained the rest of his life.

Reflecting the influence of the Barbizon painters and the Impressionist spirit he was surely influenced by during his years in Paris, Donoho's works, like this example, were bright, colorful garden scenes of the grounds at Egypt Lane, his East Hampton home. As Royal Cortissoz noted, "He painted that garden over and over again in the same spirit in which he pottered over his flowers and hedges, loving it all and understanding it."