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Michael Noakes is a portrait and landscape painter. He was educated at Downside and the Royal Academy Schools. He has painted most members of the royal family. With some, he has been commissioned on several occasions – and these include the Queen (with whom he has spent between twenty and thirty hours alone sitting), the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother and the Princess Royal, whose portrait he painted for the fifth time a year or two ago. 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 and now hanging there.
He has 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.
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 the two portraits of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. He more 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. He has always enjoyed painting straightforward domestic or family portraits, including conversation pieces, sometimes set against backgrounds.
Michael Noakes’ picture 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 (not at all 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 the issue in 2002 to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee.
Apart from painting Lady Thatcher again, as mentioned above, 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, D. Phil, FRSL, ‘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 Ebury Press, it covers the complete year up to and including millennium celebrations – with original pictures on exhibition at Christie’s in 2000 and, with 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.
He was commissioned as the National Serviceman. He is a Freeman of the City of London. He has broadcasted and televised widely on art subjects. 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. Four of his pictures are in the National Portrait Gallery, 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 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 and Duchess of York, in the House of Commons and in the British Museum.
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