• PAINTER
• Painted in several different styles and mediums, from impressionism to cubism to illustration, but is most known for her work depicting masks
• Encouraged in her art by her parents, as well as other prominent artists, including Harry T. Burleigh (composer of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot") and Meta Vaux Warwick Fuller (the first Black woman commissioned by the U.S. government to create a public sculpture)
• Won scholarships to: the Museum of Fine Arts (where she took drawing classes), the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (graduating with honors in design in 1927), and graduate school at the Design Art School of Boston
• After graduate school she was hired as a textile designer. Her designs were popular and well-received, but she soon decided that there was no chance for name recognition in designing fabrics and switched to painting.
• Hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown to establish an art department at Palmer Memorial Institute, and was quickly recruited to also coach the basketball team, play piano for the church, and teach folk dancing
• Began teaching at Howard University in 1930, and stayed until her retirement in 1977
• Served as an officer of the National Council of Negro Women (founded by Mary McLeod Bethune), as well as edited and designed the Council's journal
• Applied for and won a fellowship to study in Paris in 1937, where she befriended local artists and entertainers, including Josephine Baker, whom Jones would memorialize in 1977 in the painting La Baker
• Cultivated an expansive network of friends around the globe, including tennis legend Althea Gibson
• Supported Haitian and African artists by touring the country and continent, interviewing local artists and documenting their work
• Specifically avoided marriage until 1953 -- after her career was well established -- to avoid conflict between her art and the expectations of domesticity
• Encountered sexism often, such as when the head of Howard University's art department asked that she stop painting with oil and go back to watercolor because it was considered more lady-like
• Among the more than fifty awards she earned in her lifetime were the Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts, and Haiti's Chevalier of the National Order of Honor and Merit

Photo by National Archives at College Park [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Photo by Schlesinger Library, RIAS, Harvard University [No restrictions] via Wikimedia Commons

Outsmarting Racism

Jones's art was lauded and shown in galleries throughout France during her year-long stay, but when she returned to the United States, American gallery owners told her that even though her work was good enough, they couldn't show it because she was Black. She circumvented their racist policies by either mailing it in or enlisting white friends to submit her work for her, resulting in exhibitions -- even winning awards -- in otherwise white-only galleries.

Bibliography: Seaman, Donna. Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017. Print.

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