James Noble was born in Hounslow in 1919. The family business was painting and decorating and when he left school, he became an apprentice house painter.

It was only a year after the war that he started to paint seriously and attended Art School for two years, but, although he learnt to paint in the best English impressionist manner and his pictures were admired and exhibited in several first-class galleries, he could not sell a single one. After a frustrating spell as a picture framer and teaching art to `Borstal boys', he decided to change both his name and painting technique.

His adopted style was strongly influenced by Vermeer, the 17th century Dutch Master whose miraculous rendering of texture, colour and form ranks his paintings amongst the greatest art treasures of the world. How well James Noble succeeded may be judged by the perfection of his work - one can almost smell the perfume of his roses and the spicy tang of his orange peel; feel the patina of a silver vase or the cool sparkle of crystal; hear the rustle of crisp tissue paper and linen napkins, or, taste the sweetness of his rosy apples and sharpness of the green fruit.

In 1953 he exhibited his new-style paintings at the Embankment open air exhibition. Previously he had been unsuccessful there, but, this time he sold out completely.

Very few artists have ever achieved such mastery of tactile perfection. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and his work has also been successfully reproduced.

James Noble died in November 1989.