Barbara Jones

Barbara Mildred Jones (25 December 1912 – 28 August 1978) was an English artist, writer and mural painter. She is known for curating the exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade (1951) and her book The Unsophisticated Arts (1951). Early life and education Barbara Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey. She was an only child. Her father had a saddlery and harness business at a time when Croydon was still a rural suburb. Her first sketchbooks were filled with horses and farm machinery. Her background was a comfortable, middle class one. She attended Coloma Convent Girls' School, Croydon High School, from May 1924 to July 1930, and then Croydon Art School, [1931-1933]. From Croydon she went on to the Department of Engraving at the Royal College of Art but felt unsuited so transferred to the Department of Mural Decoration in her second year. She was taught by the likes of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. She graduated in 1937. An exceptional survival of work from this period has been restored at the University of London’s Senate House, where Jones, with four other students from the Royal College of Art, created a painted ceiling in 1936. Jones wrote about the project in her Water-Colour painting (1960). She sought commissions but realised that building up work to be free-lance would take time so took a part-time teaching post. Following the outbreak of the Second World War she accompanied the school where she was teaching on its evacuation to Luton. Early career During World War II, Jones was associated with the Recording Britain project of the Pilgrim Trust while the War Artists' Advisory Committee also purchased a work by her. The Architectural Press commissioned her to illustrate a booklet, Bombed Churches as War Memorials (1945) and Jones was further asked to write illustrated articles for the Architectural Press's Architectural Review. After the war, Jones created murals for the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition, and the 1947 Enterprise Scotland exhibition She also worked for P&O, creating murals for the passenger liner ships SS Orcades, SS Oronsay, SS Orsova and SS Oriana, as well as for hotels, restaurants, exhibitions and schools.