Sir Joseph Noel Paton, the elder son of Joseph Neil and Catherine MacDiarmid Paton, was born in Dunfermline, Fifeshire, on 13 December 1821. He became a student at the Royal Academy, London, in 1843 and was awarded a prize for his painting by the Royal Commission at the Westminster Hall competition in 1845. His first volume of verse. Poems by a Painter, was published anonymously in 1861; his second, Spindrift, appeared in 1867, the year he became a teacher at the Royal Scottish Academy.

Paton's efforts as a poet must be regarded as an avocation as measured against his true vocation as a painter, sculptor, and illustrator. He was trained, honored with prizes and fellowships, and knighted for his work as a painter, and some of the characteristics of his painting carried over into his poetry. Paton's best-known paintings include The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, Dante, The Dead Lady, The Pursuit of Pleasure...