Born in 1800 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, John Wilson Carmichael was the eldest child of William Carmichael, a shipwright. He first expressed an aptitude for drawing when aboard ship as a cabin boy in the Peninsular War. Returning at the end of the war, he was apprenticed as a shipwright on the River Tyne. It was not until 1824 that he changed his career to become an artist, exhibiting regularly at the Northern Academy of Arts in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Some 20 years later he moved to London where he had already exhibited on various occasions, at the Royal Academy from 1835 to 1859 and the British Institution from 1846 to 1862. A further six paintings were exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street where his work was frequently on show. In 1855 the Illustrated London News employed Carmichael as their Artist in the Field during the Crimean War. His notebooks relating to this work survive to this day.

Despite his removal to London he never lost his love of the North East of England. He eventually returned in 1863, settling in Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. Throughout his career Carmichael gave a fascinating insight into 19th-century Tyneside and shipping off the North East coast of England, his intimate knowledge of ships providing an accurate record of the ‘age of sail’.

On the centenary of his death, in 1968, the Laing Art Gallery paid the highest tribute to his work by staging a commemorative exhibition. Today his work can be viewed at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and museums in Gateshead, Sunderland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.