Born in Glasgow, Scotland where he began his art
studies. Gordon Coutts later studied in Paris
at Académie Julian under Jules Lefebvre and Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury.
In the early 1900s, he moved to the San Francisco area where he
became an active member of the Bohemian Club. He was
in inveterate traveler. He was to excel in portraiture and in
impressionist landscape paintings depicting the various places he
visited and lived. One of his favorite themes was that of Morocco,
both the people and the architecture that was to inspire him as a
youth. In 1925 he settled in Palm Springs, California. There he
built a French-Moroccan style home, a tribute and remembrance of
this love for North Africa.