In 1827 he was elected an Honorary Academician by the National Academy of Design,[4] which exhibited twenty-two of his paintings between 1826 and 1850.
In the same period, twelve of his paintings were engraved and published in The Atlantic Souvenir and The Token annual gift books.
Among them was Banks of the Juniata, of which critic John Neal in The Yankee wrote: "Nothing superior to it, hardly anything equal to it, can be found in the Annuals of the mother country.
William Dunlap in 1834 said Doughty "has long stood in the first rank as a landscape painter—he was at one time the first and best in the country."
Already by 1828, Neal argued that Doughty was focusing too much on the interests of his patrons, having lost sight of the creative impulse: "He has lost a portion of his old strength and solidity; he is now getting into a way of peppering and salting, to the taste of his customers.