Michael Noakes

Michael Noakes (28 October 1933 – 30 May 2018) was an English artist and portrait painter.

He was educated at Downside School and the Royal Academy Schools. His prime interests as a painter were in portraiture and landscape. He was President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Chairman of the Contemporary Portrait Society.

He painted President Clinton, making preparatory studies with the President in the Oval Office – one of only very few painters to have been given such access to any President of the United States – and Pope Benedict XVI. Michael Noakes spent much of 1999 with the Queen, making sketches, paintings and drawings for the book The Daily Life of the Queen: An Artist's Diary, written by his late wife Vivien (died 2011), published September 2000. Somerville College, Oxford is in possession of some of his portraits.