The marine painter John Wilson Carmichael was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a ship’s carpenter. Following his own apprenticeship as a ship’s carpenter, and several years at sea, Carmichael pursued a career as a drawing-master and miniature painter. In his early twenties Carmichael established himself as a marine and landscape painter, exhibiting at the Northumberland Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts, and from 1835 at the Royal Academy. He remained in Newcastle until 1845, for much of his career, and later moved to Scarborough, where he died.

Although Carmichael painted a range of marine subjects, views of the north-east coastline were a staple of his art. Dunstanburgh Castle, situated strategically on a headland overlooking the coast, was built in the early fourteenth century by Earl Thomas of Lancaster. Destroyed partially during the Wars of the Roses, it was already by the sixteenth century a virtual ruin. By the late eighteenth century it had become a popular motif for landscape painters, being the subject of watercolours by Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner. Carmichael painted Dunstanburgh on several occasions, as a dramatic backdrop to storm-tossed shipping. A painting entitled A Cutter in Distress to the South of Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland, dated 1865, is in the Mansion House, Newcastle upon Tyne.