Jonathan Janson

Jonathan Janson (born November 10, 1950) is an American painter and art historian. Biography Born in South River, New Jersey and raised in upstate New York and Florida, Janson graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, Rhode Island) in 1972 with a major in painting. The turning point in his studies came when in 1969 he visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Mass., where he saw Johannes Vermeer’s "Concert." This small but perfect masterpiece left a profound impression on the emergent painter decisively orienting his artistic direction. In his senior year at R.I.S.D. he studied in Rome, Italy, having been selected for the European Honors Program at Palazzo Cenci. After a brief return to his home in Florida, Janson returned to Rome (where he continues to live and work until today) to deepen his studies of 17th-century European painting and establish his family. In this period of creative incubation, Janson came to grips with the complexities of organizing detailed, multi-layered figurative painting.