HRH The Princess Royal c. 1977, 40"x30", oil

Michael Noakes PPROI, RP.

MICHAEL NOAKES is one of Britain’s leading portrait and landscape painters. He was educated at Downside and the Royal Academy Schools. He has worked on a wide range of subjects, from members of the Royal Family and foreign dignitaries to personalities from the Arts, music, government, finance, academia, the military and religion, scientists, ambassadors, peers, QCs, judges and numerous portraits of children and families, from all walks of life, young and old. He undertakes oil paintings and commissions in mixed media, charcoal and pencil. Michael Noakes has painted most members of the Royal Family. With some, he has been commissioned on several occasions. These include the Queen (with whom he has spent some thirty hours in sittings), the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and the Princess Royal, of whom he recently painted a fifth portrait. He has also painted the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret, the Duke and Duchess of York and the Duchess of Kent. He is the only painter to have been given time by Pope Benedict XVI, for a portrait commissioned by the Vatican shortly after he took up the post and which is now hanging there. He always enjoys too painting straightforward domestic or family portraits, including conversation-pieces, sometimes set against landscape backgrounds. Michael Noakes worked in the Oval Office on a portrait of President Clinton, and he painted Margaret Thatcher during her final year in office as Prime Minister. He painted Sir Denis Thatcher shortly before he died, a present from Lady Thatcher for her family. He is currently painting her again, a portrait commissioned by the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Other leading figures have included Sir Alec Guinness, Lord Denning, Francis Pym as Foreign Secretary, Cardinal Basil Hume, Lord Selwyn-Lloyd when Speaker, Robert Morley, Archbishop Runcie and two portraits of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster. He recently completed pictures of Neil McKendrick as Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Professor John Garside for UMIST, Debbie Forbes as Headmistress, Queen Anne's School, Caversham, Ronald Harwood, Carole Blackshaw as Lady Mayoress of London and Professor Lance Lanyon for the Royal Veterinary College. Current and future commissions include Robin Lindsay, John Bigwood, Sir Robert and Lady Craufurd, The Rt Rev Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds, Dom Christopher Delaney and a portrait commissioned by Sir Christopher Ondaatje. With the Queen's personal agreement, throughout 1999 Michael Noakes made hundreds of drawings and paintings to illustrate a book, written by his wife, Dr Vivien Noakes and called ‘The Daily Life of The Queen: an Artist's Diary‘. They were given some remarkable access and the work was not subject to Palace censorship. Published by the Ebury Press (Random House), the book covers the complete year up to and including the millennium celebrations - with original pictures on Exhibition at Christie's in 2000 and, alongside Golden Jubilee work, at the Mall Galleries in 2002 and the Tryon Galleries in 2003. The Isle of Man issued six stamps on a First Day Cover, all of images from the book. Noakes was commissioned as a National Serviceman. He is a Freeman of the City of London. He has broadcast widely on art subjects on both television and radio and has written for numerous publications. He is a Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, a Past-President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and a Past-Chairman of the Contemporary Portrait Society. He has exhibited widely all over the UK as well as in the USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Four of his pictures are in the National Portrait Gallery (a drawing of Dame Margaret Rutherford, portrait studies in oil paint of Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley and JB Priestley), and others are in the collections of numerous academic, regimental and City organisations. His work is also in the personal collection of the Queen as well as in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and several are in the possession of the Prince of Wales, including studies of the Queen and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and of the Prince himself. His pictures are also in the collections of the Duke of York, in the House of Commons and in the British Museum. Michael Noakes' portrait of Frank Sinatra was in the singer's collection, and for the record-sleeve ‘Portrait of Sinatra’ Noakes received a Platinum Disc. He is the only painter to have been given this award for work on a sleeve. A 1990 study by him of Margaret Thatcher when Prime Minister was bought at a Conservative Party Auction in February 2005, in aid of Party funds, for £440,000 (by no means an indication of his normal fee!) He designed the £5 Crown Coin issued by the Royal Mint as a mark of the fiftieth birthday of the Prince of Wales and the work of the Prince's Trust. He was also commissioned by the Royal Mint to design the reverse of the Commemorative Medal for issue in 2002 to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

Contact

Email: mail@michael-noakes.co.uk Telephone: +44(0)1684 575530 Web address: www.michael-noakes.co.uk Address: Eaton Heights, Eaton Road Malvern, Worcestershire WR14 4PE London Portrait sittings Overlooking Regent's Park