Robert Forbes Sherar [also known as Robert Forbes Shearer] was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 18 July 1862. Nothing is known about his training as an artist or as an architect. He initially worked as a painter and between 1885 and 1903 exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. In 1903 he won the competition for the Queen Victoria Memorial in Allahabad, India and at the time was recorded as being chief assistant to Peter Lyle Barclay Henderson. Probably as a result of his success in this competition, in 1903, he set up his own architectural practice in Edinburgh. His output appears to have been very small. He is known to have designed offices for Messrs Dobbie, nurserymen in Edinburgh (1909), and the Masonic Hall in Rosyth, Fyfe, Scotland (1917). In 1908 Sherar collaborated with William Erskine Thomson (1875-1962) in submitting an entry in a competition to design the New City Hall in Perth. Their designs are illustrated in British Competitions in Architecture vol. 2, no. 18, September 1908 p. 207.
In the 1920s Sherar taught geometry and perspective at Edinburgh College of Art. He also lectured on perspective and other subjects at the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1903, 1908 and 1911. He was the author of Perspective tables for practical architectural draughtsmen (1905). Later in his life he spelt his surname Shearer. He died 1943.