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Northwest artist Orré Nelson Nobles was born on April 18, 1894, in Sumter, Minnesota. After relocating several times, the Nobles family finally settled in Tacoma, Washington. Orré graduated from Tacoma High School and spent two years teaching in a small school at Tahuya on Hood Canal. This was followed by several years serving as a merchant seaman in such locations as South America and the Orient. Nobles continued to travel throughout his life.

Nobles attended Pratt Institute in New York City where he studied art for two years. He then taught arts and crafts for a summer at the University of Washington. Nobles was a teacher in the Arts and Crafts Department at Ballard High School in Seattle for more than thirty years. During the early 1920s, he and his family created Olympus Manor, a successful artist colony located on the shores of Hood Canal at Union where painters, musicians, writers, sculptors, and dancers gathered to pursue their creative aspirations. Nobles designed a grand music room in 1923 in order to enlarge the family house. At the official opening of the music room in the summer of 1925, artists from the Cornish School in Seattle presented an elaborate program for the guests. In the fall of 1945, Nobles purchased a vacant lot on James Street, above what was then Chinatown in Seattle and with the help of his family, built a tiny house which he called Windy Cliff. Orré Nobles died on December 14, 1967, at Windy Cliff.