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Paul Dougherty

Artist

Centurion, 1909–1947

Full Name Paul Hampden Dougherty

Born 6 September 1877 in New York (Brooklyn), New York

Died 9 January 1947 in Palm Springs, California

Proposed by Henry Golden Dearth and Alexander C. Humphreys

Elected 6 February 1909 at age thirty-one

Archivist’s Note: Brother of Walter Hampden and J. Hampden Dougherty; brother-in-law of Arthur Goodrich

Century Memorial

Paul Dougherty. [Born] 1877. Artist.

This was an exceedingly complex, many faceted and brilliant diamond. He studied law and no one seems to doubt that he could have become a fine lawyer like his brother [J. Hampden Dougherty], one of us; it is said in the Club that he probably could have become a fine actor like his brother Walter Hampden, also one of us; whereas, he became a marine painter rivalling that first of American painters of the sea, Centurion Winslow Homer.

While yet in his thirties, he had all the honors to be had by the artists of his time—in Paris, Berlin, Venice, Rome, and in all the American shows. You may see his work in the permanent collections of the Luxembourg, the Metropolitan Museum, our National Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and indeed in almost every American city that has a museum.

In the language of baseball, he had “everything”—friendships, energy, enthusiasm, skill, intelligence, ideas, and physical power; but, alas! stricken with arthritis in what is usually a painter’s finest period, he could hardly hold a brush to paint. But he never gave up—gay, dashing, handsome and generous Paul Dougherty, a name that came up like a comet forty years ago.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1947 Memorials