George Coates was educated at St James Grammar School, then at the age of 15 was apprenticed to a firm of glass-stainers, Messrs. Ferguson and Urie.

In 1896 he won the Melbourne national gallery travelling scholarship, and in 1897 went to Europe as did also a fellow competitor, Miss Dora Meeson, whom he was afterwards to marry.

Coates entered Julien's classes and always felt that he had been fortunate in spending his student days in Paris at such a good period of French art, while Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Jean-Paul Laurens were still living.

He obtained employment in supplying drawings for the Historian's History of the World, but after that ceased there was great difficulty in selling black and white work and portrait commissions were scarce.

The exhibition of the painting of the Walker brothers in 1913 at the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts led to his being elected an associate of that society, and full membership followed some years later.

However, Coates fell ill, and his wife had to abandon a proposed exhibition of his work at Sydney and returned with him to Europe where a holiday in Italy soon restored his health.

[1] Coates was primarily a portrait painter, but when opportunity offered he could manage a subject painting with great ability showing beautiful feeling for rhythm and composition.