Thomas Jones (artist)
Thomas Jones (* 1742 in Wales; † 1803 same place ) was an English painter. In a short creative period around 1780 he found peculiar oil sketches, with whom he was ahead of his time.
Life and work
The pupil of the landscape painter Richard Wilson goes to Italy in 1776. In 1779 he met his future companion in Rome Mary Monke from Copenhagen. A year later, they pull together to Naples. It was not until 1782 comes Jones with the help of the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton, and from a visit to him by Goethe's later drawing teacher "the great " Philipp Hackert abstattet to some customers. Of course, he provides them with the usual idylls - those works produced in the lonely and unsuccessful period, which usually show houses or a wall in Naples and have the character of magical still life, he could not expect them. But precisely because of this work, he is now regarded by experts as brilliant plein air painters and even precursor of constructivism.
After the death of his father, who brought him a considerable inheritance, Jones returns with his wife in 1783 to England, where they initially live in London. " Jones is at the Royal Academy of Painting, which copy the style of Richard Wilson and Francesco Zuccarelli and the flavor of current art collector meet: Arcadian scenes of forest and rock. Probably only appears on one ( The Bay of Naples, 1786) on the screen, the facade of a Neapolitan house with a woman waving and fluttering laundry on the balcony railing. There is no indication that he ever issuing the oil sketches of Naples. "
After the death of his older brother and other inheritance Jones takes over the family estate in the county of Radnorshire Pencerrig. He is a wealthy satisfied Landlord, which only rarely - and mediocre paints " It's a shame: the first painters in art history, who saw non clears man-made landscapes - no, there's sure a better word: they saw through - also an unnoticed ancestor of the romantic ruins of the 19th century, is back to artisans, because he now lives under pleasant circumstances. "
" In 1954, stimulated by the publication of the memoirs, the auction house Christie's, Jones ' descendants have been handed over half a hundred watercolors and oil sketches, of which not a leaf then scored more than 20 pounds. In the summer of 2010, then Sotheby's one of them, a watercolor of Egeriagrotte near Rome, auctioned for 229 250 pounds. The Wall in Naples was acquired in 1993 by the National Gallery, and thus deprived of an art market where it happens now as ludicrously as in many other markets. "