Background
He was born in the Gallowgate in Glasgow, the son of a milliner, Alexander Roche.
He was born in the Gallowgate in Glasgow, the son of a milliner, Alexander Roche.
He attended Street Mungo"s Academy in Bridgeton, Glasgow. Here he studied under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Leon Gerome.
He originally trained as an architect, but then changed to art, studying at the Glasgow School of Art and, from 1881, at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In his time here he befriended William Kennedy, John Lavery, Thomas Millie Dow and William Stott. In the early 1880s he joined a colony of Scots artists in -sur-Loing south of Fontainebleau.
On his return to Scotland in 1885 he joined with the Glasgow Boys working on murals for the 1888 International Exhibition.
In 1888 he travelled to Capriwhere he befriended Fabio Fabbi and Harold Speed. This marriage was short-lived and they separated.
As both were Catholics there seems to have never been any divorce. In 1896 he moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh and began to distance himself from the Glasgow Boys.
His work drifted from largely landscape to largely portraits.
In 1906 he remarried (possibly bigamously), to Jean Alexander, daughter of Robert Alexander. From 1907 until 1914 they lived at 8 Royal Terrace, on Calton Hill, a very prestigious property. Around 1910 a cerebral haemorrhage caused the loss of use of its right hand and he had to retrain to paint with the left.
He died in Hailes Cottage, near the Water of Leith in Slateford, Edinburgh.
He is buried in the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh near the north-east corner of the original cemetery.