Thomas Millie Dow trained in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and later at the ateliers of Rudolphe Julien and Carolus Duran. 

He exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art. In 1897, David Martin described Dow as follows. “His perception of colour is similar to his use of paint – keen and refined; and his observation of nature such as to give a true feeling of form, without a slavish imitation.”