Elisabeth Johanna Noordhof (24 February 1924 – 7 March 2013), known as Els Noordhof or Els Noordhof-Smith, was a Dutch-born portrait artist and book illustrator.

Elisabeth Johanna Noordhof was born in 1924 in Bloemendaal, Holland, the daughter of Gosse Eilke Noordhof.^[1] She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Rijksmuseum in 1945.^[2] Her older brother George H. Noordhof became a filmmaker in England.^[3]

Noordhof lived in England and the United States after World War II.^[4][5] She and her family settled in New Zealand in 1966.^[2][6] She had a studio in Dunedin, and taught at the University of Otago's summer arts schools in Kurow.^[2] She painted the official portraits of several mayors of Dunedin, though mayor Sukhi Turner was not fond of her Noordhof portrait, and replaced it with a photograph in the city council chambers.^[7] She was a patron of the Otago Art Society.^[8]

• Ruth Dallas, Ragamuffin Scarecrow (1969)^[9][10]
• Olive Smithells, Look After Your Back, Streamline Your Front (1970)^[11]
• Esther Glen, Six Little New Zealanders (1983)^[12]
• Esther Glen, Uncles Three at Kamahi (1985)^[13]

In 1949, while she was living in Cambridge, Noordhof married an American Fulbright scholar, Harold "Hal" Wendell Smith.^[1] They had four children.^[6] She was widowed when Smith died in 2006, and she died in 2013, aged 89 years. The National Library of New Zealand holds audio recordings of a 2002 oral history interview with Noordhof, conducted by Penelope Dunkley.^[14]

Her work was included in a 2017 exhibit, "About Face: Selected Portraits from the Collection", at the Eastern Southland Gallery.^[15]

• A 1967 ink portrait by Elisabeth Noordhof, of poet James K. Baxter, in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
• "Boy and His Shadow" (circa 1976), a painting by Elisabeth Noordhof, in the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
• 1969 newspaper photograph of Els Noordhof, Ruth Dallas and Keith Maslen, from a University of Otago Library exhibit.