George Noyes

George Loftus Noyes was the son of U.S. Citizens who had moved to Bothwell, Ontario Canada (where he was born) to find oil.  When his father died, his mother moved with her three young sons to East Cambridge, MA to run a boarding house. Noyes started to paint at the age of fifteen and took his first art lessons from George Bartlett at the Mass Normal School. By 1885, he was working for the New England Glass Company in Cambridge, painting fruit and flower pictures on glass.

Knowing of Claude Monet’s work, Noyes wanted to see the work firsthand. In 1890, he enrolled in Paris at the ateliers of Gustave Courtois, Joseph-Paul Blanc, and Paul-Louis Delance and at the Académie Colarossi. Painting the French countryside and being highly influenced by French Impressionism, Noyes became a successful painter and in 1891 his work was accepted into the French Salon. In 1892, he returned to Boston where he established a professional studio and he exhibited widely at the PAFA, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Academy, the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Water Color Painters. Other studios were established in East Gloucester (1893-1931), Winter Park, FL (1931-35); Pittsford-Branden, VT (1935 on).  A fire destroyed most of his work in a fire in Vermont in later life (1939).

By 1898, Noyes began painting and traveling with fellow artist Frederick Edwin Church, including a trip to Mexico. In 1903, he married Mabel Winifred Hall and taught painting classes to such notables as N.C. Wyeth, Henry Peck and Clifford Warren Ashley. From 1903-1906 he taught summer classes at Stanford University and lost many paintings in the earthquake of 1906.

In 1900 Noyes began teaching a summer class t Annisquam, MA and one of his first students was N.C. Wyeth. He painted at the Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street starting in 1906.  He traveled throughout Europe numerous times painting and many of his European canvases were destroyed in the 1939 fire. He is best known for his sun-filled landscapes and shoreline scenes painted with precision and flair in a delicate yet gutsy impressionistic manner. He signed most of his work G.L. Noyes.

Noyes was a member of the Boston Art Club, Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, Guild of Boston Artists, and a charter member of the National Society of American Artists.  He exhibited extensively throughout New England and won awards at the Buenos Aires (1910) and Pan-Pacific (1915) International Expositions. He was given solo exhibitions at the Hatfield Galleries, Boston (1906); Copley Society (6 times); St. Botolph Club, Boston (1915); Guild of Boston Artists (4 times) and a Memorial Exhibition at the GBA (1955).

Noyes devoted his career to painting impressionistic views of the countryside in and around Boston, the North Shore, White Mountains and in Venice, Italy and was one of the most successful impressionists in Boston by 1910. He died in 1925.

References:  Lyme Art Association, Artists of Cape Ann (2003); Gerdts, William, American Impressionists (1984); Jarzonebeck, N.A., The Glow of Sunlight, Paintings by George L. Noyes (1998); Falk, Peter, Annual Exhibition Records at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Annual Exhibition Records at the Art Institute of Chicago and Annual Exhibition Records at the National Academy of Design; Opitz, Glenn, Dictionary of American Artists (1982); Who Was Who in American Art