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THOMAS SATTERWHITE NOBLE
(American, 1835-1907)
Wisdom and Folly, circa 1875
Oil on canvas
58 x 78”
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William W. Garretson 1991.15

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Thomas Satterwhite Noble was raised in Louisville. In 1856, he traveled to Paris to study with the French painter Thomas Couture. After serving as a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, Noble moved to New York City, where he earned critical acclaim for works depicting anti-slavery subjects. His Last Sale of the Slaves of 1865, for example, brought the artist national recognition and was exhibited in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building. In 1869, Noble was named director of the McMicken School of Design, which later became the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He divided his time between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky until his retirement in 1904, when he moved to Bensonhurst, New York. Remembered for his portraiture and narrative paintings, Noble was most likely inspired by a literary source for his allegorical narrative Wisdom and Folly. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, for example, contains passages contrasting wisdom and folly. Though the exact source of this painting is a mystery, the ambiguity is coincidentally heightened by the painting, which was left uncompleted.