Thomas Satterwhite Noble was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He attended Transylvania University in his native city and studied art with Oliver Frazer (1808-1864) and George P.A. Healy (1813-1894). In 1853, at the age of eighteen, he moved to New York City, and by 1856 he was studying art in Paris with the historical painter Thomas Couture. Noble returned to the United States in 1859. During the American Civil War he served with the Confederate Army despite his aversion to slavery and sympathy for the plight of African Americans in the South. After the war he moved to Saint Louis and explored the lives of freed slaves in America in a series of historical and allegorical paintings. Noble made New York City his home and died there in 1907.

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