Hugh Bolton Jones

I should begin by saying that we are stumbling through American art history in a rather non academic way. Tonight is a case of that for sure. I did individual post on only a coupe of the Hudson River school painters, and not on several who were far more important than Jones. However I want to fill out this transitional period before I go on to tonalism and into impressionism. Besides you won't see a lot of these in other forums as they are a little hard to find. Thank you to the mystery donor for providing many of these to me, I am grateful.

Hugh Bolton Jones doesn't get his due, in my opinion. He lived from 1848 to 1927 like Moran his career was mostly in the late nineteenth century, although his early career was as a Hudson River school guy. From Baltimore Jones moved to New York city and actually traveled painting with Fredrick Church for a year in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

In the mid 1870's he traveled to Europe and studied there for four years. He returned influenced like many others at that time by the "modern" sensibility of the Barbizon painters. The painting above is an example of where that leads. It is no longer the super clear presentation of a highly detailed actual place. He is presenting a more ordinary scene, that could be almost anywhere. The emotional feeling of the scene is important, recreating the topography of an actual place is not. This moody scene above is a nice example of that. I enjoy the quality of the drawing that Jones brings to his trees and the rough fields he painted.

I don't think you would mistake this for a Hudson river school painting, in fact it foreshadows Metcalf and even John Carlson a little bit I think.

This painting looks to have the same sort of a tonality I was getting the other day with the Gold ocher and black. The drawing is very naturalistic, but of course this is a studio painting.



This one has a real truthful looking set of greens, I think I might find it hard to actually live with, but it does really recall that freshest part of early spring before the new leaves mature into their summer colors. Look at how he has varied the shapes and sizes of all those sky holes. He is doing some really difficult stuff in this painting.

I like the autumn paintings best. they have a lot more color than you would expect from a Barbizon styled picture though. I wonder if this was a real place or whether it was assembled. I guess...........the latter.