Born in Carnaveigh County, Monaghan, Ireland in 1875, Robert Gauley was a portrait, figure and landscape painter. Around 1884, his family emigrated to the United States and made Boston their home. Gauley began his art training under Denman Waldo Ross in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1890, he received formal instruction at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, studying under Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson. In Paris, he studied at the Academie Julian under William Bouguereau and Gabriel Ferrier. He returned to Boston in 1894 and shortly after went back abroad in 1895. Gauley stayed abroad for about six years and he traveled and painted throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and the Near East. After exhibiting in the Paris Exposition and receiving a medal for his work he returned to the States and settled in New York City. There he exhibited in the American Watercolor Society and the New York Watercolor Club and became an Associate member of the National Academy of Design. In 1908, at the National Academy's annual exhibition he was awarded the Clarke Prize for the best figure painting. Gauley was a skilled figure and landscape painter in oil and watercolor.