In 1959, Jane Noone was on the brink of a promising career when she suffered an epileptic attack while having a bath and drowned. She was just 25 and in her last term at the Royal College of Art in London.
Jane Noone (1934-1959)
Her work had already been featured in a TV programme about promising northern artists by the acclaimed LS Lowry – he of the matchstalk men – and immediately after her death, there were two big exhibitions in Darlington, one of which came to national attention through a review in the Guardian newspaper.
“Her powerfully built, strongly coloured oils “bill-posted” throughout the town’s municipal art gallery in tiers right up to the very ceiling hit between the eyes with an attack that takes the breath away,” said the reviewer WE Johnson.
Spiral staircase, by Jane Noone
The Northern Despatch (the Echo’s now defunct evening sister paper) was a little more down-to-earth.
“When Jane Noone looked at a red brick wall, she did not just see the basic red; all the latent shades of green and yellow and purple were just as vivid to her,” it said. “This exhibition gives Darlington an opportunity of seeing some colourful, exciting painting by a modern artist.”
Ladder and climbing plants, by Jane Noone
Jane was born in Darlington in 1934, the only daughter of Michael and Florence Noone who also had five sons. Mr Noone was a director of the Whessoe company.
She attended the Immaculate Conception School, which is now part of Carmel College, and then went to Chelsea School of Art before getting a place at the prestigious RCA. Her exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery gained her Lowry’s attention, and she appeared in a well received film, The Horse’s Mouth, alongside Alec Guinness (“quite probably the best film ever made about a painter”, said one critic), although people in Darlington knew her from her exhibitions in the grill room restaurant in Post House Wynd.
Water jugs, ivy and geranium, by Jane Noone
She had been receiving treatment for her medical condition since 1951, and following her death, her brothers arranged an exhibition of 150 of her paintings in the town art gallery. A second exhibition followed in 1965, but since then her works have been kept in private.
Man in corduroy jacket, by Jane Noone
Following the death earlier this year of her brother Paul, who arranged those exhibitions, only one of her brothers, Gerard, survives and he lives in Canada. However, Malila, her sister-in-law who married brother Paul, remains in Darlington and is helping to arrange the exhibition which opens on Saturday, December 20, 2025, in the art gallery in the Crown Street library.
Showing how her unique perspective transformed even the mundane life drawing classes that she had to attend as a student, the exhibition runs until February 5.
