Egerton Coghill was born in Castletownshend in Co. Cork, the son of Sir John Joscelyn Coghill, and cousin of Edith Somerville. Like Nathaniel Hone, the younger, he was a man of private means, who went to study art on the Continent. He studied first in Dusseldorf, then at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1881. He first exhibited at the RHA in 1882 with The Mid-Day Rest in the Studio. He had a studio in Paris c.1885-86 when Edith Somerville arrived in the city as an art student. He visited the forest of Fontainebleau, and painted at Barbizon (where Hone had lived), and at Etaples on the Pas de Calais coast (where Frank O'Meara was working). He appears to have moved to London c.1887, staying in Earl's Court, and becoming a member of the New English Art Club. He exhibited at the NEAC in 1888 (A Back Kitchen) and 1890 (Wild Weather on the South West Coast, Ireland), and also showed three paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

He returned home to Co. Cork in c.1890 and settled at Glen Barahane, Castletownshend, a neighbour of Edith Somerville's. He exhibited at the RHA in 1891 a painting entitled after Wordsworth The Broad Sun of Heaven is Sinking Down in its Tranquility). He concentrated on painting Castletownshend and the West Cork landscape (eg: Scenes of Ballynaffron, the Snipe Bog, Castletown Woods and Westcarbery). He enjoyed especially river and woodland scenes, changing seasons and different times of day, atmospheric effects of landscape at early morning, evening or sunset, or in Spring, Autumn or Winter. Many pictures have evocative titles such as Spring Afterglow, Autumn Reflections, The Daylight Dies, Mist Effects and Rhododendrons and Reflections. He exhibited at the RHA between 1901 and 1919, showing a painting of Switzerland Early Morning, Lac Champex in 1905, and of Etaples in 1908. He died in 1921.

Ref:
Some Paintings by Irish Modern Artists Crawford School of Art, 1960
The Irish Impressionists National Gallery of Ireland, 1984. Catalogue by Julian Campbell
Royal Hibernian Academy. Index of Exhibitors 1826-1979 by Ann M. Stewart
The World of the Irish R.M., by Gifford Lewis(Viking, London, 1985)