James Wilson Carmichael (also known as John Wilson Carmichael)
(1799 Newcastle upon Tyne - 1868 Scarborough)
Son of a shipwrite (carpenter shipbuilder), learned from his father and as a young man spent three years on a sailing boat travelling between Spain and Portugal. Upon his return home to Newcastle, he was apprenticed to a shipbuilding workshop. In his spare time Carmichael pursued drawing and painting, eventually setting up his own workshop, shared with a landscape painter. He begun exhibiting at the age of 25 at the Northumberland Institution for the Promotion of Fine Arts, Carlisle Academy, and at the Northern Academy. Carmichael developed a reputation as one of Northumbria’s best liked and respected marine and landscape artists.
Sale Ships at Stormy Sea | oil on canvas-board | 20 x 25cm
James Willson Carmichael | Stormy Sea | oil on canvas-board | 20 x 25cm
When Carmichael cam back to Newcastle, after three years at sea, the city was going through a major expansion and redevelopment. He has set himself up as a 'drawing master and miniature painter' working together with an architect, John Dobson, on the Central Station and the Granger Market. He collaborated with the publisher John Blackmore on a book Views on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway published in 1836.
After few years in Newcastle Carmichael travelled extensivly in Italy refining his paintings skills by studying and copying Italian art. Eventually returned to Britain, and after few months, in 1845 he moved to London. Carmichael regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the British Institution. In 1854 and 1855 he returned to sea to report officially on the Crimean War. His pictures were published in engravings in the Illustrated London News. Carmichael witnessed the bombardment of Sveabord, which he painted, and it is now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum.
Carmichael retired to Scarburgh and stopped painting. He died shortly after the premature death of his son.
Carmichael's work can be seen at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and at the Sunderland Museum.