A specialist in figure subjects, Francis Coates Jones is best known for his domestic genre scenes, especially his portrayals of contemporary women at leisure, often wearing classical costumes.
Jones was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1857. During 1876, while he and his brother, Hugh Bolton Jones, a noted landscape painter, were travelling through England and France, Jones decided to pursue a career as an artist. He subsequently spent almost a year at the artists' colony at Pont-Aven, associating with such fellow Americans as Thomas Hovenden and Robert Wylie. Jones later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, working under Henri Lehmann. He also attended classes at the Académie Julian where he was taught by W.A. Bouguereau and J.J. Lefebvre. During these years, Jones travelled and painted throughout France, Italy and Switzerland. He spent the winter of 1879-1880 in London working on a military panorama.
Jones returned to Baltimore in the summer or autumn of 1881. By the end of the year he had settled in New York, sharing his brother's studio on West 57th Street. Jones exhibited at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design that same year and became a regular contributor thereafter. At the 1885 annual, Jones's picture, Exchanging Confidences, received the Academy's prestigious Thomas B. Clarke Prize, awarded to the best figure composition.
During the 1890s, as his reputation became more firmly established, Jones proceeded to play a prominent role in New York art life. In addition to exhibiting and later teaching at the National Academy, Jones served as its Treasurer for a period of twenty-two years. From 1917 until 1930, he was a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, serving on several important committees, including those devoted to American Painting and American Decorative Art. Jones was especially influential in the museum's acquisition of work by living American artists. He was also a member of the Society of American Artists, the American Watercolor Society, the Lotos Club and many other artists' organizations.
Jones' early work consisted primarily of sentimental genre scenes set in richly decorated interiors. However, like other artists of the American Renaissance, such as Will Low, Kenyon Cox and Edwin Blashfield, Jones was inspired by the art and culture of classical antiquity. He subsequently began to explore themes from the antique in addition to depicting his sitters in classical garb, surrounded by decorative accouterments. Although he initially painted in a tight, academic manner, with much attention to detail, Jones's style became broader in execution after about 1910, reflecting the influence of Impressionism. Around the same time, he began to put a greater emphasis on informal scenes of women at leisure in both interior and outdoor settings.
Jones died in New York in May of 1932. Examples of his oeuvre can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute and the Brooklyn Museum.
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