Jules Noel

Jules Noel (1810-1881) View of a city under an arch, signed drawing

Jules Noël, or Jules Achille Noël, whose real name was Louis Assez Noël, was a French painter and draughtsman. Louis Assez, known as Jules, was born on 4 January 1810 in Nancy. As his sixth child, the name "Assez" (enough) clearly expresses the weariness of his mother's repeated pregnancies. He spent part of his childhood in Quimper, then in Lennon, where his father, a works supervisor with the Ponts et Chaussées for the construction of the Nantes-Brest canal, taught him drawing. He came to Paris and studied with Jean-Victor Bertin. In 1836, he exhibited two paintings for the first time at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in Nantes. In 1837, he married Adèle Cécile Constance Caris, the daughter of a Lorient bookseller. It was with his brother-in-law Eugène Michaux, a naval artillery lieutenant, that he found documentation and maritime techniques for his meticulous depictions of sail manoeuvres. As a result of his regular visits to Brest, he painted five major pictures of the harbour and its port. In 1839, he moved to Nantes. During a visit from the Duke of Nemours, to whom he presented his sketchbooks, he received his first commission: His Majesty the Duke and Duchess of Nemours embarking in a rowboat in Brest harbour on 10 August 1843. On the Duke's recommendation, he was awarded the chair of drawing at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, where he settled in 1845. From 1840 onwards, he exhibited at almost all the Paris salons, and continued to do so until 1879. At the Salon of 1846, with three works, Jules Noël established himself as a sailor. Baudelaire, commenting on Souvenir de Rhodes, wrote: "M. Jules Noël has painted a very beautiful marine, with a beautiful, clear, radiant and cheerful colour". During the school holidays, he travelled to Brittany and Normandy to paint landscapes and seascapes. He worked in his in-laws' region between Auray and Hennebont, but also frequented the port towns of Douarnenez, Brest, Quimper, Morlaix, Roscoff and Landerneau. In 1856, he was affected by the death of his mother, who had supported him. Very early on, he had adopted the backwards N for his paintings and drawings, as a tribute to his mother, who signed in this way. In 1860, he offered thirty paintings for sale at the Hôtel Drouot. The sale was a success. In 1875, he stayed in Le Tréport, Geneva, Berne, Fribourg and Basle. But his most notable stays were in Dieppe (1858-1872), Le Tréport (1870-1878) and Fécamp (1866-1877). The Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper presented a major retrospective of his works in 2005. A large number of national museums keep works by Jules Noël in their collections, notably the Louvre Museum, the National Maritime Museum in London, the Château de Versailles museum, the museums of Brest, Marseille, Briançon, Dieppe, Rennes, from Dijon, Angers, Castres, Chantilly, Chartres, Chaumont, La Rochelle, Mulhouse, Nancy, Nantes, Reims, Tours.