Background
Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland and attended the Royal Scottish Academy and exhibited his work while still a teenager.
Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland and attended the Royal Scottish Academy and exhibited his work while still a teenager.
He spent three years in Melbourne, Australia, from 1872 and then returned to Scotland. From 1884, he was again in Melbourne, and gained a reputation as a landscape painter. In 1902 Paterson was elected president of the Victorian Artists Society, also in the same year he was appointed a trustee of the public library, museums and National Gallery of Victoria.
At the Victorian Artists Society winter exhibition of 1896, Paterson"s "Evening in the Bush" received excellent notices.