Jean-Baptiste DE NOTER
Walem 1786 - Mechelen 1855
Biography
A Belgian painter and draughtsman known for cityscapes, interiors, urban views and studies of buildings, Jean-Baptiste (Jan Baptist) André de Noter was the son of the Mechelen architect Pierre-François de Noter. He seems to have studied with his father and was also a pupil of Pieter Verhulst at the Municipal Academy for Arts in the city of Mechelen. At the age of eighteen, Jean-Baptiste moved to Ghent to join his elder brother, the painter Pierre-François de Noter the Younger. He lived and worked in Ghent for nearly two decades, earning a living from the sale of his architectural drawings and watercolours, and in 1822 he returned to Mechelen, where he was to spend the remainder of his career. Many of his cityscapes of Ghent and Mechelen were of a historical nature, and were often based in old maps or paintings. Indeed, many of the buildings so carefully depicted by the artist no longer survived. Among his most important patrons was a Canon Schöffer, who commissioned de Noter to paint 340 watercolours of the buildings and gardens of Mechelen and the surrounding area. Purchased by the city in 1878, the Schöffer collection is now housed in the Mechelen City Archives, and serves as a valuable record of how the city appeared in the early 19th century; many of these watercolours were later reproduced in the book Mechelen zoals J. B. de Noter het zag (Mechelen as Seen by J. B. de Noter) by the Flemish historian Jan Neckers, published in 1980. De Noter also earned the occasional public commission, such as painting new stage sets for the city theatre of Mechelen in 1833. His son David de Noter was also an artist.
