Jules Achille Noël, born Louis Assez Noël, studied at the Académie de Peinture et de Dessin in Brest. After his study he went to Paris where he made his debut at the Salon in 1840 and continued exhibiting there until 1879. His work attracted the attention of Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours (1814-1896), who obtained him a position as a Professor of Design at the Lycée Henri-IV, where he would teach from 1847 until his retirement in 1879.

When the new railroads made access to Normandy from Paris a lot easier, Noël would return regularly to Normandy to paint. One of his favorite towns was Tréport and he would represent this charming place and it’s surroundings with the cliffs, the port and the quays on many occasions.

Noël's works are renowned for their charm, his drawings are lively and his watercolors and paintings are executed with unmistakable verve and much admired. Charles Baudelaire wrote in one of his reviews of the salon '(...) M. Jules Noel has provided a really beautiful marine painting, of fine clear colour, bright and luminous'.

Indeed his technique was very fluid and he sometimes used oil paint very thinned like watercolor. Noël was particularly successful in his representations of the Normandy and Brittany coasts. His scenes of family life by the sea are picturesque and life-affirming social documents.