Francis Coates Jones

Francis Coates Jones was born in 1857 in Baltimore, Maryland, into a wealthy family. He attended a Quaker school in Baltimore until he was fourteen.^[2] His elder brother was the landscape painter Hugh Bolton Jones (1848–1927).^[3]

In 1876 the Jones brothers visited Europe, where Francis became interested in becoming an artist.^[3] In London the two brothers stayed with Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911).^[2] Jones then spent nearly a year in Pont-Aven, Brittany, where there was a colony of American artists. He made friends there with Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895).^[3] In the fall of 1877 Jones moved to Paris. He taught himself drawing, then was admitted to the antique class of Henri Lehmann at the École des Beaux-Arts.^[2]

In 1878 the two brothers traveled to Spain and Morocco. They met their parents and sister, and made a tour of Europe. Jones returned to Paris and enrolled in the Académie Julian.^[2] There he studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911).^[3] He made sketching tours in Italy, Switzerland and France.^[4] Jones continued to study in France until 1881 apart from a trip to Baltimore in the summer of 1879 and a period in the winter of 1879–80 when he painted a military panorama in London. He returned to New York in 1881 and shared a studio in the Sherwood Studio Building with his brother. In 1882 he was elected to the Society of American Artists. He then returned to Paris.^[2]

Jones finally moved back to the United States and settled in New York City in 1884, where his work as a figure painter was quickly recognized.^[3] Although he did not have to work for a living, he taught portraiture at the Art Students League of New York. He also obtained commissions for illustrations from Scribner's Monthly and The Century Magazine.^[2] In October 1893 Scribner's published a set of his views of historic houses in Washington. From 1895 Jones painted murals. In the summers he would make painting expeditions to the Berkshires at South Egremont, Massachusetts.^[4]

By the 1890s Jones had a solid reputation and began to take a leading role in the art world of New York.^[5] Jones taught at the National Academy of Design for over thirty years.^[2] For twenty two years he was treasurer of the National Academy of Design.^[3] From 1917 to 1930 Jones was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[3] Around 1907 Jones, his brother and their invalid sister Louise moved into an expensively furnished studio and home at 33 West Sixty-seventh Street in Manhattan. In 1929 Jones experienced a stroke that left him acutely paralyzed. He died in 1932.^[2]