Joseph Noel Paton: An Artist’s Life is a rare retrospective dedicated to one of the leading artists of the Victorian era, and features a number of his royal commissions, alongside paintings showcasing his naturalistic style. The exhibition at Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries also includes notebooks, personal objects and letters the artist received from such luminaries as Oscar Wilde and Lewis Carroll, and Queen Victoria’s private secretary. The Dunfermline-born artist was hugely popular during his lifetime, with barriers often needed to keep crowds in check when his work went on display.
He was also said to have been Queen Victoria’s favourite artist, and she is reported to have remarked that Paton painted “such beautiful pictures”. It was the Queen herself who in 1862 invited him to Windsor Castle to produce the sketch of her and her nine children gathered around a marble bust of Prince Albert, just months after Albert’s death in December 1861. The artist’s wife Maggie and children Diarmid, Mona, Freddy and baby Victor all accompanied him when he travelled to Windsor to undertake the commission.
The sketch had been intended as a preparatory drawing for a painting entitled In Memoriam, but Paton had to return home after he contracted influenza during his stay, and the painting was never completed. For exhibition curator Lesley-Anne Lettice, the fact Paton was invited into Victoria’s inner circle during this time revealed a lot about the esteem in whi.