Edinburgh, United Kingdom
James Campbell Noble studied art under the supervision of William McTaggart at the Royal Scottish Academy.
1879
Noble became an associate member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879, becoming its full member in 1892.
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
James Campbell Noble studied art under the supervision of William McTaggart at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Noble became an associate member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879, becoming its full member in 1892.
Noble was born in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, on July 22, 1845. He was the son of James Noble and Rachel Campbell. Three of his cousins were also painters, including Robert Noble (1857-1917), James Inglis Noble (1853-1912), and David Noble (1865-1890).
James Campbell Noble studied art under the supervision of William McTaggart at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Noble's early artworks comprised mostly of portraits, idyllic plein air scenes of country life as well as rural genre scenes like country cottage interiors. James Campbell Noble taught his cousin Robert Noble, a Scottish artist specialising in landscapes, from 1871. He later became a professor at the Royal Scottish Academy and among his pupils was the well-known Scottish artist, Robert Gemmell Hutchinson. He had a studio at Picardy Place.
In addition to painting the landscape of his native Scotland, he also extensively travelled throughout Europe searching for suitable subjects to paint. He painted the scenery on the Clyde, Merwede, Seine, Tyne, Maas (Meus) and the Rhine.
He lived for a long part of his life in the Netherlands and the area around the port of Dordrecht became one of his favourite places to depict. However, he also painted in such places as 's-Gravendeel, Volendam and Zaandam. His Dutch port scenes and seascape paintings are now considered to be his best-known artworks.
In the early 1880s, James Campbell Noble painted the rocky coastal scenes of Berwickshire during his stay in Coldingham. The painter moved back to the Netherlands in 1900 painting the Dutch waterways again. Over the course of his artistic career, he was a permanent contributor to the Royal Academy shows in London, where he exhibited between 1880 and 1896.
Towards the end of his life, Noble resided in Scotland, living in Dumfries and Galloway. His Sunset near Glencaple was presented at Royal Scottish Academy in 1913. James Noble's portrait was created by the well-known portrait painter John Pettie and was later exhibited in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.
James Campbell Noble was a highly acclaimed artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is famous for such his paintings as A Watermill, A Dutch Scene, Dordrecht, Harbour Scene with Fishing Boats, Half-tide Rocks, East Coast Berwickshire, Dutch Canal Scene, etc.
Many works by the artist have been sold at auction, including his Shipping on the Merwede, Dordrecht, which was sold at Christie's Amsterdam "Nineteenth-Century Art" in 2000 for $10,066.
Today, his artworks are part of numerous public and private collections, including those at the Sheffield Museum, the Victoria Art Gallery, Perth and Kinross Council, the Royal Scottish Academy, the National Trust for Scotland, the Scottish National Gallery, among others.
A Study
The Old Wharf, Dordrecht, Holland
Outward Bound
A Grey Day with Dutch Fishing Boats
Highland Landscape with Sheep and Dogs
A Dutch Scene
Sunday Morning
Harbour Scene with Fishing Boats
Dordrecht
Waves
Looking up Strathspey, Highlands
Ships on the Merwede at Dordrecht
Half Tide Rocks, East Coast, Berwickshire
Tarbert
Dutch Canal Scene
A Watermill
Sunset near Glencaple on Solway
A Dutch Waterway
An East Coast Harbour
Mull from Iona
Spring flowers
A Busy Dutch Estuary With Barges
Golf Club Links - Nairn
Seascape
Shipping off the Bass Rock
Dartmouth
Monadhleath hills, autumn
A Venetian boatyard
Shipping off the Dutch Coast
Steamboats by a quay
A busy Dutch estuary
A monastic intrigue
Figure on a path leading to a cottage on a crag
Noble became an associate member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879, becoming its full member in 1892.
Robert Noble (1857-1917) was a Scottish landscape painter. Noble was the first President of the Society of Scottish Artists, a Scottish artist-run organization which aims to promote and encourage experimentation and the "adventurous spirit" in Scottish art.
