Noel Denholm Davis

{{Short description|English portrait painter}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Noel Denholm Davis (1876–1950) was a British artist, who worked chiefly as a portraitist.

He was born in Nottingham, England, in 1876 and studied at Nottingham School of Art, and then the Royal Academy Schools.{{cite book|title=Artists in Britain Since 1945|url=http://issuu.com/powershift/docs/dictionary_d/33|publisher=Goldmark Gallery|pages=33–34}} He spent a decade working in London, before returning to live in Nottingham.

File:Statue in Nottingham Council House (4).JPG, with one of Davis' frescoes, above ]]

A number of his subjects have connections with Nottingham, including several owned by the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Castle Museum, and Nottingham City Museums and Galleries.{{Art UK bio|retrieved=15 July 2014|nocount=1|ref=1}} One of his portraits of Jesse Boot, 1st Baron Trent is in the collection of the University of Nottingham,{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sir-jesse-boot-18501931-bt-jp-46629|title=Sir Jesse Boot (1850–1931), Bt, JP (later 1st Baron Trent)|work=Art UK|accessdate=15 July 2014}} another of the same subject is on loan to the National Portrait Gallery.{{cite web|url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw206648/Jesse-Boot-1st-Baron-Trent?LinkID=mp127848&role=art&rNo=0|title=NPG L247; Jesse Boot, 1st Baron Trent|publisher=National Portrait Gallery|accessdate=15 July 2014}} Among his other notable subjects were Albert Ball V.C. and William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.

In 1929, Davis painted the frescoes, still extant, in the stairwell of Nottingham Council House.

He died at Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in 1950.