Painter and architect Robert Douglas Wells was born in London in 1875. He studied architecture at Trinity College, Cambridge between 1893 and 1896 and then worked as an apprentice with the firm Stevenson and Redfern in London between 1896 and 1899. He then worked with Ralph Seldon Wornum for a year. In 1901 he was awarded a scholarship to the British School in Athens where he worked with archeologist Robert Bosanquet in eastern Crete. Later that year he began an independent practice in London.

Wells taught himself watercolor and often painted the architecture and landscapes of the places he visited or worked. He married noted Royal Academy painter Madeline Rachel Wells and the two lived at St. Albans Studios in London.

He died in 1963.