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Biography
Robert Noble RA RSA PSSA (1857–1917) was born at Edinburgh on 27 January 1857 to Thomas, a railwayman, and his spouse Janet Inglis. He was apprenticed at 14 to an Edinburgh lithographer but he also worked with his older cousin James Campbell Noble in his Picardy Place studio while taking the by then established route to the Trustees’ School on the Mound and RSA Life Class (where James Campbell Noble was one of his teachers). Spells in Paris at the Carolus-Duran studio changed his output from figurative to landscape subjects.
By the late 1880s, Noble had made East Linton his home and he was to remain there the rest of his life. Robert Noble became the central figure of the band of artists working out of East Linton. Over twenty have been identified, amongst the most notable being Robert Hope, William Miller Frazer and Thomas Bromley Blacklock. Noble extended a friendly welcome to every visiting artist which, together with his growing reputation in London, encouraged artists from all parts of the UK to paint the beauties of East Lothian.
In 1891 the Society of Scottish Artists formed and Noble became their first president. He became ARSA in 1892, RSA 1903, being admitted RA in 1903. He exhibited widely, achieving a bronze medal from the Paris International Exhibition of 1900. He died very suddenly at his home, The Neuk, Prestonkirk, on 12 May 1917. His paintings are in the collections of the Tate, AG, NGS, and the City of Edinburgh (see
Art UK).