Joyce Haddon studied at Cambridge and the Royal Academy Schools where she won the Creswick medal for landscape and Landseer prizes for landscape, drawing and painting from the antique. She married a farmer with whom she had three children and during the First World War her painting was interrupted when she had to work on the farm in aid of the war effort.

Haddon finally returned to painting at the age of 46 and continued to paint until her last days at the age of 80. She was a member of the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of British Artists, showing regularly at their annual exhibitions as well as of the Royal Academy, the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery and several exhibitions in Birmingham, Belfast, Paris and Sydney.