Biography
Violet Madline Josette 'Jo' Jones (b. Knebworth, Hertfordshire, UK 1894 - d. 1989) began painting as a young girl in Jamaica where she held an exhibition there that then travelled to Chenil Galleries, Chelsea in 1924. She studied in Paris and Zurich in the late-1930s abd studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 1933 the director of the Tate Gallery, J. B. Manson (1879-1945), introduced Jones to Wildenstein Gallery, which gave her her first solo show in 1935, from which Augustus John, Sir William Rothenstein and the Contemporary Art Society bought her pictures including Still Life with Green Peppers.
In 1938 she had a show at Galerie Zborowski, Paris, with another at Wildenstein in 1939, the year she moved to London and also had a cottage and studio in Long Bredy, Dorset. During the war worked as a land girl in Dorset and in Intelligence. She also spent time in Spain during the 1950s, and Morocco in the 1960s and after that mainly in Dorset with occasional journeys abroad, especially to Vevey and Zürich. She held several shows at the O’Hana Gallery, London and in Zurich and also exhibited at the Society of Women Artists. For some years Jones lived with the Sacro Monte gypsies in Granada, and related pictures by her are in the Gypsy Museum at Leeds University. In 1969 The Gypsies of Granada was published, with text by Augustus John, Sacheverell Sitwell, Walter Starkie, Laurie Lee and Marguerite Steen. She exhibited regularly in Britain and abroad, having a retrospective at Alpine Gallery, 1985. The Michael Parkin Gallery had a memorial exhibition in 1992.
