He was apprenticed to the carriage painter at Albany, New York, and his first efforts inside art were around making landscape decorations for the panels of coaches. Later on he returned to Scotland, in which he exposed for triad years.

He opened the studio inside Up to date York within 1853, & was elected an associate of the National Academy of Project inside 1857 and an academician in the below month. He was as well the member of the U.s. A river Color Society, & was its president from either 1870 to 1873.

When one of a class action of the Hudson River School he enjoyed considerable popularity, his pictures being within numerous easily-known Our contries collections. He died at Mount Vernon, New York, on the 17th of June 1894. His brother James McDougal Hart was also the painter.