🔥 Important Antique Wichita Bill Nautical Seascape Oil Painting, John NOBLE

Description: This is a well-done and Important Antique Old American Nautical Seascape Oil Painting on Artist Board, by renowned early 20th century Post-Impressionist plein air painter, John "Wichita Bill" Noble (1874 - 1934,) father of the talented American nautical painter in his own right, John A. Noble (1913 - 1983.) This artwork depicts a deeply Impressionistic and evocative seascape scene at sunset, with a lone schooner, and two abstracted ovoid clouds, above intricately painted tumultuous ocean waves. Signed: "J. Noble" in the lower right corner. Additionally, there is some partially illegible remnants of writing on the top left corner of the verso of the frame, which reads: "At Sunset...John N..." In addition, there is an old, yellowed framer's label from New York affixed to the verso of the frame. This piece likely dates to the 1910's - early 1920's. Approximately 16 7/8 x 21 inches (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 10 x 14 1/4 inches. Good condition for age, with some moderate edge wear, scuffing, scratches and gilding loss to the original period gilded wood frame (please see photos.) Acquired from an old collection in Pasadena, California. Noble's original artworks are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C., Wichita Art Museum, Kansas, and many other important private collections worldwide. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About the Artist: John (Wichita Bill) Noble Born: 1874 - Wichita, KansasDied: 1934 - New York CityKnown for: Marine, animal-bison, and rural landscape painting, newspaper cartoonsName variants: Wichita Bill John (Wichita Bill) Noble (1874 - 1934) was active/lived in Massachusetts, New York / England. John Noble is known for Marine, animal-bison, and rural landscape painting, newspaper cartoons. John ('Wichita Bill') Noble was born in 1874 to an upper-middle-class family that had emigrated from England. He was a noted post-impressionist painter of cowboys, sunrises and seascapes. He wore a five-gallon hat and called himself the "first white child born in Wichita."He often advised prospective customers not to buy his paintings. He often slashed them up and sometimes even bought back pictures he had sold, just to mutilate them.Noble worked in the late 1890s as a photographer and artist in Wichita, Kansas. While there, he painted a saloon nude (Cleopatra at the Roman Bath) that came to be notoriously condemned and defaced by Carrie Nation, and a larger-than-life-sized portrait of Albert Pike which still hangs in the reception room of the Wichita Consistory.He went to France in 1903 at age 29, where he took on the fictionalized persona of "Wichita Bill." He studied at the Académie Julien under Jean-Paul Laurens and befriended fellow American artists George Luks and Richard E. Miller.He married Amelia Peiche, of Strasbourg, France, in 1909. At the outbreak of World War I, they moved to England.Noble had exhibitions of his work at the Daniel Gallery (1920), the Rehn Galleries (1922), and the Milch Galleries (1925).He was survived by his widow, two children, John and Towanda, two sisters, Mrs. Bert McCausland and Elizabeth Noble, and one brother, Arthur, all of Wichita. His son, John A. Noble (1913–1983), was also a well-known artist and lithographer and is the namesake of the Noble Maritime Collection.In 1941, his widow found a landscape of a sunrise over Boulogne, France that he had painted in the collection of William Randolph Hearst. It had been badly retouched, so she bought it, cut out and saved the sunrise from the center of the canvas that had not been retouched, and then took a carving knife and slashed the rest to ribbons.In "Artist In Manhattan" Jerome Myers recalls his friendship with Noble. "The name of John Noble first became known to me through an early portrait which George Luks painted of him, called "Whiskey Bill." The thin, sensitive face was so unlike the Noble whom I knew many years later, when he returned from abroad. He came to see me, wearing his inevitable white sombrero and flowing Windsor tie; a powerfully built man with the serious face of a cleric under his hat, reminding me of Franz Liszt. Noble was a fine athlete. With George Luks, he played in the first professional baseball game in Paris. Alone, he rode his white horse into the cafes of Paris, a veritable rough rider, the idol of the French kids. Essentially, however, he was a religious mystic. The white horse went into his pictures as a poetic symbol. His religious processions of Brittany, as well as his boats off the Breton coast, were enveloped in a religious fog. In me John found something—I know not what—that appealed to him; perhaps it was something in my work that was attuned to his idea of art, making me an exception in his almost wholesale condemnation of his contemporaries. John's violent encounters at the Salmagundi Club are written large in the memory of that institution—outbursts which were impelled by a fanatic devotion to art. At their dinner, he yanked off the tablecloth, carrying all the dishes with it―an indirect though forcible criticism of Salmagundi's art. Towards the end, a tragic brooding came over him. So great was the interior struggle between the John Noble who once fought off five policemen and the artist who painted Provincetown bathed in moonlight, that at last it wore away his resistance. Pathetically, desperately, he grasped at the grand illusion of art that was his life. He truly died for a cause—and that cause was the art of John Noble."Irving Stone's 1949 novel, The Passionate Journey is a biographical novel of John Noble's life.Some of his paintings can be seen at the Wichita Art Museum. John Noble was born in Wichita, KS on March 15, 1874. As a boy he had no formal schooling and instead worked with his father driving cattle over the Chisholm Trail. Eventually, however, he went to Cincinnati where he studied for a short time at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts. In his early career he worked as a newspaper cartoonist and painted portraits of nudes for public bars. One of these paintings was the celebrated Cleopatra at the Bath, which hung behind the bar of the Carey Hotel in Wichita and it was that painting which won notoriety when it was gashed by the zealous social reformer, Carrie Nation in 1901. While still a young man, John Noble went to Paris and studied at the Julian Academy as well as at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Brussels. In 1906 he married a French girl and settled in Brittany where he worked as a fisherman with a sardine fleet. It was during this period and in the succeeding years spent in Etaples and in London that he gained fame as a painter of the sea. In 1920 he returned to the United States where he spent the remainder of his life. Noble was active both in New York and in the well-known Provincetown art colony and actually founded the Provincetown Art Association, serving as its first president. He was a true individualist and a true roman­tic, but his life was a turbulent one. He suffered from chronic alcoholism and in 1934 died in Bellevue Hospital, New York City, from paraldehyde poisoning. John Noble is known for his paintings of the Texas plains, done while working for his father driving longhorn cattle up the Chisholm Trail, and in addition, he did commercial work as a draftsman and cartoonist. He was especially noted for his landscape paintings around Provincetown, Massachusetts.Noble was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1874 and was raised on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma. He received his first formal training at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts and became a competent illustrator and cartoonist. He traveled the country working as a newspaper cartoonist and painter. In 1902, Noble went to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens, and then on to Brussels where he attended the Academie des Beaux-Arts.Noble lived several years on the coast of Brittany, working as a fisherman and painting in his free time. Later he moved to London before returning to the United States around 1920. He settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts and began earning prestigious prizes in exhibitions at the Salmagundi Club; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and at the National Academy of Design.Noble lived in New York City after 1924 and died there a decade later from paraldehyde poisoning.He was a member of the Allied Artists of London; National Academy of Design; Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, Hartford; Grand Central Galleries, New York; Paris-American Art Association; Provincetown Art Association, and the Salmagundi Club, New York.Exhibitions included Art Institute of Chicago; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Annual Exhibition Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, and the Daniel Gallery, New York.Source:John and Deborah Powers, Texas Painters, Sculptors,and Graphic ArtistsPeter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art Biography from the Archives of askART Born Wichita, March 15, 1874; died New York, NY, January 6, 1934. Painter, specialized in landscapes, animals, marine. Illustrator. Cartoonist. Raised on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma. Studied at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts then traveled the country working as a newspaper cartoonist and painter.In 1902, Noble went to Paris where he studied at the Academié Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens, then in Brussels at the Academie des Beaux Arts. Lived on the coast of Brittany for several years working as a fisherman and painter before moving to London.Returned to the US and settled in Provincetown in 1919 where he led Provincetown Art Association in the early 1920s. Known as "Wichita Bill" he was recognizable for his five-gallon Stetson hat, rattlesnake tie, and engaging stories of the prairie wilderness. Lived in New York from 1925-33. Irving Stone's 1949 book, The Passionate Journey, was based on John Noble's life.SOURCES:Susan Craig, "Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945)"WW 26-27; American Art Annual. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1898-194727; Reinbach, Edna, comp. “Kansas Art and Artists”, in Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society. v. 17, 1928. p. 571-585.; Sain, Lydia. Kansas Artists, compiled by Lydia Sain from 1932 to 1948. Typed Manuscript, 1948.; Newlin, Gertrude Dix (Development of Art in Kansas. Typed Manuscript, 1951); Festival of Kansas Arts and Crafts. Catalog: Arts and Crafts of Kansas: an Exhibition held in Lawrence, Feb. 18-22, 1948 in the Community Building. Lawrence: World Co., 1948 (il); Fielding, Mantle. Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, with an Addendum containing Corrections and Additional Material on the Original Entries. Compiled by James F. Carr. New York: James F. Carr Publ., 1965.; Shipp, Steve. American Art Colonies, 1850-1930: a Historical Guide to America’s Original Art Colonies and Their Artists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.; Julian; Spencer, Howard. The Legendary Wichita Bill: a Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by John Noble. (Wichita: Wichita Art Museum, 1982); AskArt, www.askart.com, accessed Dec. 21, 2005. From the Provincetown Art Association Archives, Website, UndatedJohn Noble whose fame as an artist is rivaled by his notoriety as an illuminating conversationalist, is an interview with JH.C. Johnson, prominent newspaper man and former editor of the Tip Bit column in the Advocate, expressed his views on Art and Artists recently.“The lowest form of work becomes an art when done right. Some of our greatest artists never took a lesson. Yet I’d advise one interested in art to go to a school; at least learn how to draw.But bear in mind, there is a distinct difference between an artist and a painter. A painter may be a master of technique, yet never in all his days become an artist. He has not the spark of soul that the artist has. The artist may not even know how to draw; but eventually he will work out his problem and do the inspired sort of work the painter is not capable of doing.”Information provided by Edward P. Bentley Biography from Weiss AuctionsNoble was born in 1874 to an upper-middle-class family that had emigrated from England. He was a noted post-impressionist painter of cowboys, sunrises and seascapes.He wore a five-gallon hat, called himself the "first white child born in Wichita." He often advised prospective customers not to buy his paintings, and he often slashed them up and sometimes even bought back pictures he had sold, just to mutilate them.At age 29, he went to France where he took on the fictionalized persona of "Wichita Bill." Noble had exhibitions of his work at the Daniel Gallery in 1920, the Rehn Galleries in 1922, and Milch Galleries in 1925. John NobleWichita, Ks:1913 – 1983John (‘Wichita Bill’) Noble was born in 1874 to an upper-middle-class family that had emigrated from England. He was a noted post-impressionist painter of cowboys, sunrises and seascapes. He wore a five-gallon hat, called himself the “first white child born in Wichita.” He often advised prospective customers not to buy his paintings. He often slashed them up and sometimes even bought back pictures he had sold, just to mutilate them. Noble worked in the late 1890s as a photographer and artist in Wichita, Kansas. While there, he painted a saloon nude (Cleopatra at the Roman Bath) that came to be notoriously condemned and defaced by Carrie Nation, and a larger-than-life-sized portrait of Albert Pike which still hangs in the reception room of the Wichita Consistory. Wichita BillOn April 22, 1889 he rode an iron gray bronco from Caldwell, Kansas into the Oklahoma territory as an adventure, joining the 20,000 others who became known as the “Sooners”. He later would paint a picture called “The Run” immortalizing the race for land. At the time, he was a young man who had not discovered himself yet. He said he gave up his claim to a family he felt needed the land more then he did and went on to Oklahoma City to see it build up before his eyes. His name was John Noble. The article above tells the story of John Noble who at age 14 was herding sheep on his father’s ranch near Wichita, Kansas. As a sheep herder he had plenty of time to practice his love of drawing while watching the sheep. As John got older he was given the opportunity to illustrate the stories written by David B. Leahy. David Leahy had many of his stories printed in the newspapers. John recalls in this article, that Mr. Leahy at that time was known to friends in Wichita as “Dynamite Dave”. As time went on, John picked up other mediums and began experimenting with pastels. Sometime around the age of 18, John Noble was given the opportunity by his parents to go to the Eden Park Art School in Cincinnati. This experience lasted about half of a year and then he returned to Kansas. After returning he moved around a lot and became known in his own words as “Wichita Bill”. It was during this time that he tells of his encounters with Wild Bill Hickok and Bob Dalton. Included in this article is the famous story about Carry Nation hurling rocks at his painting called “Cleopatra at the Bath”. In the spring of 1897, John scraped together enough money to go to Paris to study art. This was upon the recommendation, of his friend Victor Murdock, who challenged him to become a real artist. In Paris, he was known for wearing his cattleman’s hat and a necktie made of rattlesnake skin. He earned quite a reputation there with his six-shooter on his hip and not all of it was good. According to him, the people of Paris called him a “Kansas Cyclone”. He took up residence in Brittany and there he began some of his most famous paintings of ships and the horses that launched the boats. It is also where his painting “The Benediction of the Sea” was made. This painting showed the Breton peasants marching to the sea to bless it and give thanks for their lives. John eventually married and had children. When the war came he moved his family to London and was given the opportunity of having a show at which he earned $14,000.00. As a result of his success he was able to return to America. Upon returning to the United States, he settled his family on the East Coast. There he continued with his success. Researching John Noble brings to light that he struggled with alcoholism and eventually died while being treated for his addiction. It appears that this interview was done a few years before his death. His legacy of painting was carried on through his son John A. Noble, who is known for his paintings of great sailing ships on the East Coast. John A. Noble, is the sole reason for the Noble Maritime Collection. The interview with John Noble is found in:The American Magazine Vol.CIV No.2 August 1927 page 34-35, 66-70

Price: 6500 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2024-08-11T03:38:30.000Z

Shipping Cost: 25 USD

Product Images

Item Specifics

All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted

Artist: John Noble

Signed By: John Noble

Size: Medium

Signed: Yes

Period: Early 20th Century (1900-1920)

Title: "At Dawn"

Material: Oil, Artist Board

Region of Origin: New York, USA

Framing: Framed

Subject: Community Life, Fishing, New York, New York Skyline, Seafaring, Seascape, Seaside, Seasons, Ships, States & Counties, Sunsets, Working Life

Type: Painting

Original/Licensed Reproduction: Original

Item Height: 21 in

Theme: Americana, Art, Cities & Towns, Continents & Countries, Exhibitions, History, Nature, Nautical, Patriotic, Social History, Travel & Transportation

Style: Americana, Impressionism, Tonalism

Features: One of a Kind (OOAK)

Production Technique: Oil Painting

Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

Handmade: Yes

Item Width: 16 7/8 in

Time Period Produced: 1900-1924