Menu
John Edward Jones NDD ATD Dip FA RWA (August 1926-October 2010) was a painter, teacher, film-maker, collector and Joycean who spent much of his working life at the University of Leeds.
Born in Gloucestershire to Stanley and Ivy Jones, he studied at Colston’s School, Stapleton and the West of England College of Art in Bristol.
Called up in 1944, he served with the Royal Engineers in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy and Egypt before returning to the West of England College of Art in 1948 where he retook the art course from the beginning (still taught by George Sweet), and went on to the Slade School of Art (University College, London) where his teachers included Claude Rogers, William Coldstream and the art historian Rudolf Wittkower. He graduated with a diploma in Fine Art in 1954 and won the Art History Prize.
After painting murals in coffee bars and night clubs in London and running the art department at a school in Kent, he went with Gabriela, Rudolf Wittkower’s niece, to her home in Buenos Aires. They were married in 1957. In Argentina John Jones had one-man shows of his work, and designed silver jewellery, coffee tables and fabric.
Back in the UK in 1959 he became a lecturer in Art at Leeds Day Training College, Head of the Art Department at James Graham College (in 1961) and in 1963 a Lecturer (later Senior Lecturer) in the Fine Art Department at Leeds University, appointed by Professor Quentin Bell. Together he and Bell pioneered a new kind of Fine Art Department – half practice and half art history (the teaching of the practice of art was hitherto confined to art schools). Under Bell, and his successor Professor Lawrence Gowing, Jones ran the studios, while Bell and Gowing (both also practising artists) ran the art history course.
John Jones also instigated and ran a course on film-making and the history of film within the Fine Art Department.
(Cont/d below picture)
“John’s benign influence, huge tolerance and keen intelligence had a profound effect on those of us fortunate enough to have studied under him.”
– Political cartoonist Steve Bell, 2010
Art students at the West of England Academy, Bristol, Rag Day circa 1948. John Jones, in Harlequin sleeves, is sitting on the piano, top left.
In 1965 Jones took a research scholarship to the USA and made films of and interviewed over 100 American artists. For decades he used samples of his recordings in lectures around the country about the US artists of this time. John Elderfield, Jones’s former student (later Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York) called Jones a ‘modern-day Vasari’. See WORDS for more on the American art tapes.
A collector of Victorian optical toys and precursors of the cinema, Jones was also founding chair of the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain. Some of his collection is now in the National Museum of Film and Television in Bradford.
Jones served on the Executive Committee of the International Arts Association, and committees for UNESCO and the Yorkshire Arts Association. He was a London University Moderator for GCE O and A level Art, President of the Leeds Fine Art Club and NE Regional Organiser for the Open College of the Arts.
He retired from the Fine Art Department in 1991 and until 1995 taught part time there and in the Department of Communication Studies.
He exhibited with the London Group, at the Royal West of England Academy, Leeds Art Fair, Leeds Fine Art Club and elsewhere. His one-man shows included two at Leeds University (the second Jan/Feb 1993), and a joint exhibition in Harrogate (Nov 1982) with Quentin Bell, showing Bell’s ceramics and his paintings.
He signed his work J E Jones or Jones (and date).
He and Gaby were married for 53 years and had two daughters, Rachel and Nicolette, two sons-in-law, David and Nicholas, and two granddaughters, Rebecca and Laura.
“I will start with a boast. It was my idea to bring John to the Department of Fine Art in the University of Leeds, there to be our master of painting. The University never made a finer appointment.”
– Professor Quentin Bell, 1982
All content is copyrighted by the estate of John Edward Jones.
Privacy Policy | enquiries@johnedwardjones.co.uk